As regular CFZ-watchers will know, for some time Corinna has been doing a column for Animals & Men and a regular segment on On The Track... particularly about out-of-place birds and rare vagrants. There seem to be more and more bird stories from all over the world hitting the news these days so, to make room for them all - and to give them all equal and worthy coverage - she has set up this new blog to cover all things feathery and Fortean.

Thursday, 28 December 2017

Pūkaha wildlife sanctuary quadruples amount of self-setting traps


Illya McLellan/STUFF

Pūkaha Mt Bruce Wildlife Centre has received 500 new self-setting traps thanks to funding from Pub Charity and a partnership with trap manufacturer Goodnature. Staff are excited at the possibilities, with traps installed previously having already made a marked difference.

Cutting edge trap technology is boosting birdsong and helping efforts to restore the New Zealand bush to its former glory.

Conservationists hope to restore fauna to levels which prompted botanist Joseph Banks to write in 1769 that the New Zealand bush had "certainly the most melodious wild musick I have ever heard". This technology could well bring the dream closer.

Pūkaha Mt Bruce National Wildlife Centre conservation manager Todd Jenkinson said the addition of 500 A-24 Goodnature self-setting predator traps at the centre, north of Masterton, would go a long way to increasing the birdsong at the centre and surrounding areas.   

The centre already had 160 A-24 traps throughout the 942-hectare reserve and 2000 hectare buffer zone and he had noticed the difference they had provided in the number of birds that could be seen and heard.

"There has been a noticeable increase in rifleman, whitehead, grey warbler, shining cuckoo and long tailed cuckoo since we have had the A-24 traps on the reserve. 

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