People are starting to use the Smart Cages across Franklin, but by far the biggest buy-in has been in Whiriwhiri. The concept was to flip the trapping game on its head, do away with walking lines, rotten animals, re-baiting, and ineffective traps. Replace all of that with high interaction multi-species traps, the type that need […]
Category Archives: Predator Free Whiriwhiri
Garry & Jan’s Kereru #3
It’s a boy, or a girl? Who knows, but it is a kereru fledgling. Congratulations Garry and Jan of Whiriwhiri. In twenty five years they have only ever seen kereru occasionally make nests here, and then watched them fail. Not this year though. Really cool thing is this is the second one from this nest […]
Dabchick vs Ferret
We’ve been lucky enough to have a Dabchick nesting on one of the ponds around Whiriwhiri. They’re a cool little bird, renowned for carrying their young on their back’s. They’re not renowned for being able to defend themselves from death machines like cats and mustelids. With an estimated 2,000 of these left they are considered […]
New Traps, AT220 & Flipping Timmy
New Trap An AT220 multi-kill trap – a crazy looking thing that will take out 100 possums per battery charge, re-bait itself and run 6 months or more before a service. Andy Saunders has had one in use and had success with 2 possums in 4 minutes, how’d he know that? The eTrapper sensor on […]
Otaua Silver Enviro School
After a lot of hard work over the last few years Otaua School was last week awarded Silver status as an Enviro School. The significance of this was highlighted by the those in attendance, two Waikato Region Councillors and the Mayor himself. From composting, to large scale vegetable production, a Trees for Survival nursery and […]
Whiriwhiri Kaka
2020 Update: The second year running the Kaka have turned up. In 2019 it was two in Sept / Oct but this year they have turned up much earlier arriving in April with four still hanging about three months later. A juvenile Kaka made himself resident at Whiriwhiri last month. The local bird population were […]
Mayoral Conservation Award 2019
Our Collaborative predator Free Franklin Initiative picked up the Collaborative Auckland Mayoral Conservation Award which as well as the signed certificate comes with an extra $2,000.
School Holidays = Action
The school holidays are here and it is time to top up your bait stations and reset traps. It is also a great time for carrying out a bird count to celebrate the impact you are having in your local area. Come and join us on Wednesday 17th July for a community bird count. We […]
Southern Pestival
Waiuku hosted the Southern Pestival this month with guest speakers from across the Auckland region. Some inspiring stories came from the likes of the Waiheke the project where their aim is to be free of rats, possums and mustelids. They are very well funded and organised with a mixture of contractor and private land owner […]