Pest Trapping at Grovetown Lagoon

My name is Anna, and in January this year, my son James (who is 7 years old and a KCC member) and I offered to help out with the KCC trapping line at the Grovetown Lagoon here in Marlborough. You may have read about our trap line in the Autumn/Ngahuru 2017 issue of Wild Things: our KCO Kathryn and KCC members set up the nine traps last September.

Since the trap line was put in, we have caught a grand total of 43 mice and 12 rats!  Not bad for 10 months work from nine traps.  Our most successful trap (Trap 8) caught 10 mice and 2 rats.

We have had a great time helping with the trap line.  It has motivated us to visit the beautiful Grovetown Lagoon more often, and has given us lots of great opportunities to learn about the special birds, fish and critters that live there.  We really love how the trap line gets us out into nature regularly, and we feel that we are making life a little bit easier for our native species while we are there.

In the last month, the Grovetown Lagoon Restoration Trust has put in three trapping lines, that loop right around the lagoon: they have around 60 ‘DOC 200’ traps, targeting rats, stoats and hedgehogs.  After seeing for ourselves how big the pest-problem is at the lagoon, our family decided to become involved as volunteers for the Trust, and now we regularly head off to the lagoon to check and reset the DOC 200s.  In fact, we have become a bit addicted to pest-trapping, and have done trapping workshops, learnt to identify different kinds of rats and other vermin, and have also become volunteers at Kaipupu Wildlife Sanctuary in Picton, so that we can do even more trapping!

Kathryn is soon stepping down as our KCO after five brilliant years of service – James and I, on behalf of our whole Marlborough KCC whānau,would like to thank Kathryn for all she has done for KCC in Marlborough.  For our family, the KCC trap line was the start of a very healthy addiction – for us, and for our environment!

Ngā mihi nui,

Anna Crowe