Traps great risk to kea: Advocate

Paul van Klink

A kea advocate is concerned about the risk of injury or death to kea from new self-resetting traps designed to kill their predators.

Wanaka man Paul van Klink believes the Department of Conservation has not done enough field testing of the Goodnature A24 re-setting trap in kea habitats.

Doc says the trap has been trialled with captive kea with no issues and the department will be continually monitoring its performance.

Mr van Klink said the endangered alpine mountain parrot's insatiable curiosity and inquisitiveness could easily lead it to the trap.

The Goodnature A24 trap was hailed as a major cost-saving breakthrough for Doc, as it has the potential to kill up to 24 times before it needs to be checked.

The trap is also regarded as a more humane way to kill predators than 1080 poison. The weight of the rat or stoat in the trap triggers the release of a piston into its head, killing it instantly.

A kea could access these traps ``and the potential for a kea's bill to be smashed by the trap or the bird killed is, in my view, an unacceptable risk''.

Mr van Klink said there was at present no pest-control technique that could completely mitigate the risk to kea but Doc needed to intensively monitor the effects of the traps and be prepared to pull the pin if the risk to kea was found to be too great.

Goodnature co-founder, director and designer Robbie van Dam said it did four years of field testing of the traps.

There were now more than 50,000 of them around New Zealand and he had ``yet to hear of one kea being killed in one''.

He said when they found they had an issue with weka being injured by the traps, they designed a "weka excluder''.

But they had so far found no issue with kea so had not designed anything similar for them, and indeed did not know what they would design because no risk was identified.

Doc eastern South Island operations director Andy Roberts said Doc planned to use Goodnature A24 self-resetting traps as part of its network of traps to protect nationally threatened species, such as the Haast tokoeka in the Haast Kiwi Sanctuary and the orange-fronted parakeet in two Canterbury high-country valleys, from predators.

He said other species vulnerable to predators, including kea, would also be protected, but the traps would not be used with weka-exclusion devices at these sites as weka were not present.

"We work closely with Goodnature at a range of sites around the country and ... we continually monitor and look for ways to improve their effectiveness in protecting native species.''

Doc would monitor A24 traps in the field as part of continual improvement processes and to ensure there are no issues with kea.

The number of kea in the wild was estimated to be between 3000 and 5000.

There was now widespread acceptance their numbers were declining and a kea recovery plan was urgently needed.

A Kea Konference was held last weekend at Arthur's Pass. Nearly 100 kea enthusiasts attended, including representatives from Doc, Kea Conservation Trust, Federated Mountain Clubs and Peter Hilary.

A draft kea recovery plan was submitted to Doc at its conclusion.

kerrie.waterworth@odt.co.nz