This post outlines our efforts and success at reducing pest animals, to protect indigenous species, in Cashmere, Port Hills, Canterbury – towards a Predator Free New Zealand by the year 2050. Find us at www.trap.nz/project/251462/info – current status, on 12 May 2021:
A huge Thank You to all project contributors.
Follow or write to us at facebook.com/PFCashmere.
Our program origins are in long residence and familiarity with the pest animal issues of Cashmere. Residents typically use hardware store poison through lack of other options. Plentiful domestic food sources – gardens, fruit and nut trees, waste – have led to abundant pests, with, anecdotally, ‘Cashmere having a rat problem’ for years. Possums had gotten prolific too. So – lacking any council support – the neighbourhood has taken direct action to counter these pest plagues. Quite effectively now – a lot fewer are encountered in 2021.
The Cashmere Residents Association had taken great interest in the Predator Free Port Hills project being launched in a local church hall late 2017. We obtained a modest range of traps to test immediately and began rolling them out, while waiting for Summit Road Society stock: these took a while and were never sufficient, amounting to a fifth of the traps eventually deployed. Meantime a group of keen local residents sought Kiwibank community project funding, through the national Predator Free 2050, successfully. Most of our traps thus come from there – the Cashmere Predator Free local project – with the remainder from a few other sources including private supply.
A large toll of pest removals was researched, documented and added to through 2018-2020, using the agreed trap.nz website map. So in 2021, the change of Predator Free Port Hills record system has forced our withdrawal from it, to remain with the trap.nz system that has been working so very well for us to date. We are a ‘broad church’ campaign team, with significant results and experience now. Thanks.
Oh! To all the Cashmere cat and dog owners out there who also contribute to pest control – the Thank You includes you 🙂
The traps we use cannot harm cats or dogs. The lures we use are not attractive to carnivores. Our collective efforts to reduce poison use, through manual pest trapping techniques, mean much more safety for neighbourhood pets: less risk of secondary poisoning by consumption of scavenged pest carcasses. We all work together well for animal welfare, with NAWAC guidance and approved tools.
Kia ora. Kia kaha.
Watch for future edits and updates.
Cashmere Residents Association 