Trapper Monthly, April 2026

Dear Trappers and Fantail Friends
 
April is here and the middle of autumn. The invasive trees down in the gorge, like sycamores, cherry trees and elderberry all change their colours to red and gold. They look beautiful and really, I like it, but they do not belong here and in fact are a great nuisance as when they grow taller, they shadow the native plants which consequently die. 

Now would be the time to get to them as they stick out like a sore thumb among the native greenery. Too hard for me to get to them all. Some I have cut down and Ecan indicated that they want to come back and remove more of them. It is very hard to control sycamores in such an environment. They just grow up again. A bit like the rats. They just produce again.

And that brings us to the results for this month. A very good month it was too. First of all, the low number of possums is pleasing. Ten possums only! What a relief from the shock of last month when we had 23. We are in the ‘cleaning’ up phase now.

That does not seem to be the case with the rats. We got a record number of 55 rats in April and also reached the astonishing number of 2000 rats removed from the forest. That surely must have an impact too on the bird  numbers we will get next spring! Then we had six stoats and five weasels. Also, a good number but as stoats are notoriously hard to catch it might only be the tip of an iceberg. Still, a stoat less is a stoat less and good news for the birds. All in all, we had 18 outings between Marcel, Paul and Jo, Jon and Sue and myself.

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Jon, Sue and myself

The Fairways

​More good news for the birds is that we opened two more lines. They are called Top Fairway and Lower Fairway and are just below the golf course near holes 14 and 16 just over the edge where there is a strip of native forest full of broadleaf, fuchsia, ferns and mature lancewoods. There are fantails in there too and bellbirds. This area used to be the rubbish dump of the former farm of Terrace Downs. All sorts of things turn up and also a lot of golf balls! They are useful to put into the traps as they attract rodents and stoats! They must think that it is an egg!

The lower fairway is equipped with six AT220 traps and ten DOC150 traps which Marcel helped me transporting and setting up. They have already taken out a fair amount of rats and a possum.

The top fairway has three AT220 traps installed and needs more DOC150 traps which we still have to order. Then I am working on yet another line more down towards the river and I have deployed twelve A24 traps from Goodnature. They are the automatic gas powered rat and stoat traps. The track itself needs a bit more work and sign posting but otherwise it is all go.
























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The fantail shop has been doing exceptionally well this April. Lots of post cards were posted so much so that Juliana had to print another edition! And we had to order another set of our fantail stamps!
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So, what’s not to like about it all. More traps, less predators, more birds, more plants. Good news altogether. Which is what this newsletter is all about. Good news about nature, the birds and the environment.

Other regions and other people are doing the same and much more. But every little thing helps and improves life on our planet. Recently I walked the Caples/Routeburn track and saw loads of stoat and rat traps along the walkway. They were fairly new I noticed and might not have had much impact so far. I did not hear many birds apart from an occasional bellbird or fantail. Once I saw a tomtit and twice, I got ‘attacked’ by a black South Island Robin. They forage on the forest floor and are quite fearless even stepping onto my boots and picking whatever they found on it. Kind of forest shoe cleaners. Similar to those little fish that cling to the big whales and clean the skin of the whales. 
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South Island Black Robin

​There were supposed to be Takahe as well in the Greenstone but I saw none of them. There are many traps all along the valley floor. They are maintained by Ngai Tahu, DOC and the ‘Takahe Recovery Group’ and with support from Fulton Hogan. Eighteen Takahe were released in 2023 and now between twenty and thirty live in the Greenstone Valley. Which is good progress but sadly enough, in 2025 four Takahe were found dead, killed by a stoat. More traps are put in place now and are checked more often.
Checking the traps is of great importance. Because once a predator is caught in there, say a rat or even a mouse, then that trap is ineffective and will not catch anything else. The more ready traps out there the more predators are caught! This is part of our success as we check the traps fairly regularly. As you can read above on 18 days in April!

Another good news story, at least in my opinion, is that recently a Swedish citizen scientist, on a bird watching tour to New Zealand, took a photo of a moth and posted it on iNaturalist, and guess what, the iNaturalist community identified it as the mythical Frosted Phoenix Moth! This moth was thought to have been extinct with only ten specimens ever been found and the last one in 1959. And now it was found again on Stewart Island! 
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Frosted Phoenix Moth by Hudson 1928

Frosted Phoenix Moth, by Johnsson 2024

Now why does it matter that a single moth, the Frosted Phoenix Moth has been found again? Dr Robert Hoare, a New Zealand moth expert, got excited about the find and said that ‘no other living soul has seen this moth, the Holy Grail of NZ moths’.  It is exciting and significant because the moth was seen again. It is not extinct. It is still part of the fabric of life on our planet. It is still part of us! Because everything that lives and thrives on this earth is also part of us. We belong together. There is no escape from it and the more we destroy, the more we ignore, the more goes extinct, the poorer our earth becomes. And the poorer we become.

It is a sentiment that David Attenborough has told us over many years, and in many books and television shows. Did you know that Attenborough turns one hundred this year?! In fact, on the 8th May 2026. He would be one of my heroes, one of my teachers. Alas, I fear that his most profound teaching has been lost, the teaching that we have to tread more gently, more softly and more considerate on this earth because it is so precious and so amazing. That is the only reason why we should do so, go a bit easier, and it is a reason more than enough.

We could say in a fatalistic view that extinctions have always happened on earth, and new forms of live developed but there was never before a human factor, a human idea that we rule the world, like the Book of Genesis teaches. Infinite growth on earth is not possible, not for humans and not for any other creature. It is still a dilemma for me. Because science tells us that in a few billion years, give or take, the sun will burn up, and all will be gone anyway,

Happy Birthday David Attenborough!

David Attenborough is actually quite positive in humanity’s ability to turn the tide. It is a sentiment I do not share to the same level. As he says we do have the tools to remedy the problems but do we collectively have the will to do so?

I quote from his book A life on our planet where he writes: ‘We often talk of saving the planet, but the truth is that we must do these things to save ourselves’. The world will be turning on its merry way quite happily without us. We must not only use our intelligence, but we must use wisdom. That is hard to find. I remember the story of Diogenes, a Greek philosopher, who walked the streets of Athens with a lantern even in daylight trying to find a wise man! Again, David Attenborough writes: ‘We must not give up hope’. And so, we continue.

We have now removed almost 1300 possums from the forest along the walkway in the Rakaia Gorge. And it shows. We observe what the Predator Free Dunedin, who declared the Otago Peninsula possum free just recently, tells us. Mainly that the forest and native habitat is greatly improving and with it the bird life in the forest. It is a landmark result for Dunedin, and the birds are returning in large numbers. Especially the kereru, or New Zealand pigeons, are observed much more often. Because the possums devasted the population of kereru by eating the eggs and chicks and they are also competing for food such as kowhai leaves and flowers.
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Along the walkway we notice the same. Many more kererus can be heard clumsily flying in and out of the trees or just sitting silently on a tree branch overlooking their little kingdom. What a sight to be seen. And I think this is one of the most obvious proofs we have that our trapping is in fact working!
This month of April was also Conservation Week. A kind of feel good campaign to go ‘naturing’, to bond with nature, to do something. How convincing it all is I am not sure. What foundation it all has is not certain. It is good that people go out there and collect rubbish on the beaches in Wellington. But it would be better if there was no rubbish in the first place!

Kereru, 1st May 2026

The New Zealand Nature Fund seems to concentrate its efforts on a subantarctic island way down in the Southern Ocean. Auckland Island or Maukahuka Island. An extremely beautiful place on earth, remote and wild and magic. Yet it is devasted by feral cats, pigs and mice. You would think that at least a place like this would not be affected by human interference. But no, we have to clean it up to enable the native flora and fauna to survive and flourish. You would think that the mice have little impact. Well, in large numbers they attack the fledglings of albatrosses and other birds. What a disaster those few boats that ever landed on these shores have wrecked on Auckland Island.

It will cost a few million dollars to make these islands predator free and to remove all pests introduced by early explorers and settlers. There was a colony of goats, there were cattle and rabbits, all eradicated in the 90s. But pigs remain, cats and mice. Strangely enough no rats are on the islands.

Did you know that New Zealand has joined the international Island-Ocean Connection Challenge? The project aims to make the Auckland Islands, the Chatham Islands, Pitt Island and Stewart Island predator free by 2030. That is in addition to other islands which are part of the challenge.

The Island-Ocean Connection Challenge is an international conservation initiative which aims to restore and rewild 40 globally significant island-ocean ecosystems by 2030. The addition of our three islands brings the total number of committed island-ocean ecosystems to 20. At a cost of 137 million dollars.
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https://nznaturefund.org/news/why-we-must-embark-on-nzs-largest-island-pest-eradication-project-as-soon-as-possible/
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Auckland Island

And while the Nature Fund tells us that we are lucky to live in such a place as New Zealand, and I certainly believe so, we still have to do our most to keep it a lucky place. It is what I often hear from people, tourists on the walkway, that we live in an astonishing beautiful country, and I know that all of us together, with a little effort, can keep it that way. Thank you all again for helping with the Fantail Trust project.
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Fantailistic greetings from Robert and Christine