Canterbury Aoraki Conservation Board Award (September 2025)
The Arthur's Pass Wildlife Trust received the Canterbury Aoraki Conservation Board's Te Waka o Aoraki highly commended award on 3 September at the award ceremony held in Otautahi / Christchurch. Also acknowledged as highly commended was Conservation Volunteers NZ Christchurch (who regularly assist us in our projects), Styx Living Laboratory Trust, and Trees for Canterbury.
- Te Waka o Aoraki 3rd place: Te Ara Kãkãriki Greenway Canterbury Trust
- Te Waka o Aoraki 2nd place: South Island Wildlife Hospital
- Te Waka o Aoraki overall winner: Whakaora Te Waikãkãwai
Our Trustee, Helen Hamblin attended the ceremony on behalf of the APWT to accept the award. Helen commented on the night... "Awesome to see all the amazing mahi being done in conservation. Engagement of the next generation is happening which is so very exciting."
A Month at the Trust (August 2025)
After getting through most of winter without winter actually being a thing, the later part of August finally saw snowfall to lower levels and the early arrival of the spring monsoon.
August was still fairly quiet on the predator front with 3 stoats, 1 weasel, 23 rats, 1 wild cat, and 14 possums turning up in our predator trap network. The higher number of possums was due in part to the deployment of our new possum trapping lines.
A ridiculous amount of invasive weed control took place during August with over 1100 Douglas Fir trees (30cm to 25m) being dealt to on the lower northern face of Bealey Spur. With the extremely mild winter the oncoming weed season is likely to be spectacular very much in the negative sense.
The later part of August saw the start of our bi-annual kiwi call survey. 25 volunteers braved the freezing night-time temperatures at our 20 listening sites. Many kiwi pairs were recorded, some in new locations, however the second week of the survey turned into a bit of a washout with the early arrival of snowy/wet weather. The survey has now been extended to the end of September in hope of obtaining more call data.
The Trust welcomed aboard our large volunteer team Sammy and her mother Priscilla during the month, both will be maintaining the important Bealey Hotel predator control line.
The Trust was successful in it's application to the Selwyn District Council's Predator Free 2050 Fund. This has allowed us to deploy 20 Trapinator possum kill traps fitted with Celium nodes to allow remote monitoring in the Bealey Valley / Bealey Spur areas.
Beech mast on the way... (August 2025)
DOC have put us on notice that the South Island is going to experience a fairly large beech masting (full seeding) event this coming summer. This is meant to be more intense in beech forests near the backbone of the alps and west. The effect of the mast will diminish as you head east. At this stage it is difficult to predict what we will see in the upper Waimakariri Basin. Irrespective, we should still anticipate it could be bad for us, and keep on top of our trap checks to reduce the number of predators getting through next winter.
Even though the seeding event will be this summer, the actual predator plague associated with this won't come to a head until Spring/Summer 2026.
Selwyn Predator Free 2050 Fund Grant (August 2025)
The Arthur's Pass Wildlife Trust has been successful in it's application to the Selwyn District Council's Predator Free 2050 Fund. Our application was for the purchase of 20 Trapinator possum kill traps fitted with Celium monitoring nodes. Because Encounter Solutions was able to provide us refurbished Celium nodes, further traps may likely be obtained in the coming months, after we sort through the foibles of this trapping system.
The APWT has been unable to effectively do any possum control in the Bealey Valley / Bealey Spur areas since 2008, when use of pesticide controls were prohibited due to the possible negative interactions with scrounging kea. These traps will allow the Trust to target specific areas for possums for a time before "leap-frogging" the traps to a new location. Remote monitoring of the traps will allow the traps to remain active for longer, and prudently cleared. The servicing of these traps is done by volunteers.
More cat traps, more protection, thanks to ECAN (March 2025)
The APWT just obtained funding from ECAN's Waitaha Fund to further expand our feral cat trapping network. The Waitaha Fund has been instrumental in establishing this trapping network, and it's expansion since early 2022.
Currently we have 40 monitored cat traps deployed throughout the Bealey and Waimakariri Valleys, with a further 9 manually monitored traps available as required. Over the past 12 months this trapping network has captured 27 wild cats, 28 possums and 27 hedgehogs. The removal of so many cats from these valleys will no doubt give some breathing space to the native wildlife, and allow it to rebound in these valleys.
The additional funding from ECAN will be used over the next 12 months to fortify the cat trapping network with a further 10-20 monitored traps. In recent months we have moved one of our Celium monitoring hubs to give the network better radio coverage into the upper Waimakariri Valley, hopefully allowing us to deploy some traps towards Turkey Flat, cutting off the dispersion of cats into the upper valley area.
100 new traps see the light of day (November 2024)
Saturday 2nd November saw 26 volunteers descend on the Arthur's Pass Fire Station to build 100 new shiny Kea-proof DOC 150 predator traps. 13 volunteers arrived from Forest & Bird Youth in Christchurch, and were transported to Arthur's Pass for the day by the TranzAlpine train (many thanks to Matthew Morison, one of the KiwiRail TranzAlpine managers for making this possible, and for mucking in on the day). Local APWT members from Arthur's (predominately the Barkley clan) & Bealey Spur (predominately Tony :), plus a German "woofer" (Leo) completed an extremely efficient trap building team.
By 3.30pm the hundredth trap had come off the production line. These were promptly inspected by several Kea for their "proof-ness". By days end several volunteers were sporting blisters, and "over-enthusiasm" wounds, and undoubtedly a Sunday sleep-in was deserved by many.
These traps will be used to replace traps that have come top the end of their useful life, been taken by storms or vandals. A couple of new trap-lines will be established around Klondyke Corner and Bealey Spur to bolster the protection of Roaroa (Great Spotted Kiwi) recently identified in these areas.
