Kia ora mai koutou,
Department of Conservation (D.o.C) has presented to eradicate Darwin ants from the northern end of Waikawa, where the Tūturuatu hold territories. The ants have shown to present a risk to the Tūturuatu. The dates planned for were, Mon 24 April – Wed 2 May. The weather forced the teams off the island 4 days earlier than expected. Report – Helen Jonas from D.o.C.
Team One: Putting bait stations out – Tues 25 April – Fri 28 April 2023 (2DOC, 2Vol)
Team Two: Bringing bait stations in Friday 28 April – Sat 29 April 2023 (3DOC, 2Vol)
Main Day for eradicating the ants, Friday 28 April – caulking gun work – four hours on the island (8 DOC, 7Vol)
Work to be done:
- Make up bait stations for outside the fence.
- Prepare the fence area for poisoning.
- Prepare the bait tubes and gear for the main poison day.
- Service the traps.
- Service the spit tracking tunnels.
- Complete roll call of tūturuatu on the island.
- Carry out the main poisoning within the fence.
- Bring in the bait stations.
- Clean all the bait stations.
Results
- 1200 bait stations were made up and put out over two days.
- A total of 82 tubes were used in the bait stations and on the main poison ground within the fenced area.
- We had a team of 24 people (13 DOC staff and 11 Volunteers) on the main poison day using caulking guns to put out Fipronil Vanquish Ant bait in a 1m by 1m grid.
- The fence area covered 16454sqm, we used 75 of the 82 tubes within the fenced area. This is maybe on the light side of getting enough poison out, but it should be adequate.
- The bait stations were all brought in on Saturday 29 April. I only wanted half of them in that day, and half in on Sunday, so that the ants had three days to work on the bait, but because of the terrible forecast with another weather system coming down the country, I needed to get the team off before they would be stuck there for days on end, so all the baits had to come off in a day.
- There was no time to clean the bait stations, so these were all brought off the island, and had to be dealt with back on the mainland.
- The map shown in appendix one shows that out of the 1200 bait stations put out, only 11 of them had Darwin ant activity. This is a great result, indicating our previous years work had done well. It also shows that the Darwin ants are contained within the area that we were poisoning.
- The teams did a fantastic job, and worked so very hard to get the job done.
- There were no irregularities on the tracking cards. Only showing mice, snails and skinks.
- All but four traps were serviced with no kills to report. Ran out of time to complete the last four traps down the east side (traps 124A,125, 125A and 126)
- I was not able to get a good roll call, only had an hour to work on this while we were there, then Zac was able to follow up with an additional 10 I hadn’t recorded, so ended up with 67 birds.
- Lots of grey faced petrel heard flying to the island at dusk.
Next trip
The next trip will be the second stage of the Darwin ant poisoning work, which is planned for Monday 22 April – Monday 29 May 2023, with the main poison day occurring on Thurs 25 May 2023.
If any shareholders are interested in volunteering for this mahi or any other mahi set on Tawapata & Waikawa, please get in touch with the committee via the contacts tab in this website, your details will go on a list (this is a short list with shareholders a 1st priority) This detail collection is to notify you when the occasion to volunteer occurs, advise D.o.C that you are interested and for health & safety protocols, your information will be held by Tawapata South Inc for the purposes of health & safety only and will not be shared with any third party, unless disclosed to you.
Ngā manaaki atu whanau,
Marina
