Rats evicted from student flats
Predator Free Dunedin’s City Sanctuary project has had an exciting few months installing backyard traps in more than 90 students flats.
North Dunedin is one of three pilot sites where the aim is to have 1 in 10 households trapping in their backyards. There are around 860 dwellings in North Dunedin, so the goal was to get traps into at least 86 flats by the end of June!
Never before has there been a trap network in this suburb! With students changing flats every year, it will be an interesting challenge.
The team kicked things off in February with a stall at Orientation Week where North Dunedin’s mascot — Thicc Boi the kererū — was introduced. Next, we hit the streets, dropping hundreds of flyers and chew cards into letterboxes.
In April, 1 NEWS aired a story about our project, profiling some of the first students who started trapping.
We know students were supportive of backyard trapping and that some were having issues with pests. Yet only a trickle of people had signed up for trap. So it was time to take the traps to the people – in an appropriately wild North Dunedin style.
On a Saturday afternoon in May, the City Sanctuary team and volunteers stormed Castle Street and Leith Street as part of the North Dunedin Rampage. Armed with wheelbarrows of traps, Thicc Boi signage and hi-vis vests, we rocked up to as many flats as we could and offered them traps.
Despite parties beginning to kick off and students getting ready for the ‘Beaver Ball’, the team installed almost 30 traps in just a few hours!
The North Dunedin Rampage crew ready for action!
Our project featured in the Otago Daily Times and a few light-hearted stories in Critic magazine generated more interest from people in the area.
We reached our goal of 1 in 10 households trapping in the last week of June. Although most students were familiar with the concept of backyard trapping, many had never done it before.
Half of the flats have received a Goodnature A24 self-resetting trap with the other half receiving a conventional snap-trap in a wooden safety box.
We now have traps on some of Dunedin’s most notorious streets and in the backyards of colourfully named scarfie flats, including: The Dirty Pirate, The Doll’s House, Duke Box, The Asylum, The Orchard and Big Red.
Catherine and Zac install a Goodnature A24 at the “Big Red” flat.
People have been getting good catches of large rats, hedgehogs, mice and even a few possums.
It’s a been a wild ride - we’ve gate-crashed a Hyde Street party, installed traps in bedrooms, nailed chew cards on couches, crunched through glass and broken furniture, and seen some sights which aren’t suitable for publication!
We’ll be supporting students for the rest of the year and offering help with trapping. We’ll also do more pest monitoring and get feedback from trappers about their motivations and experience using the different traps.
We’re keen to have the network in place long-term so will be working with land owners and the university later in the year to work out a plan for the traps.
