Stoats and Weasels Beware!

Up until now, the main focus of our work at CUE Haven has been the reforestation project and we have been planting trees to establish a canopy to supress weeds and to create an environment for second and third generation trees to develop into a sustainable forest.

As a result, our pest control activities have concentrated on possums because of the damage they do to native vegetation.  We have several lines of bait traps laid out and we regularly stock them with brodifacoum poison pellets.

With the improved health of the vegetation comes additional bird life and to protect the birds we need additional pest control measures.   Some of the worst threats to birds come from mustelids—stoats and weasels.  Unlike rats and possums, mustelids are strictly carnivores, so they won’t take the brodifacoum bait.

This is why we don’t like them

The solution is to trap them and we recently acquired ten DOC 200 traps and are laying them out throughout the property in areas where stoats and weasels are likely to be active.  We are baiting and deploying them in line with Department of Conservation guidelines.   This is how a nice new trap looks:

Setting the traps can be a bit of a challenge, but it’s not as bad as clearing them when something has wandered in!

Here is a trap in place and ready for action:

This trap caught two weasels in its first two nights of operation.  I’ll spare you the pictures of that!