To come back to your original topic Dan, perhaps this would be a good candidate for a citizen science project (Get involved with citizen science; Conservation activities).
One of the problems is that we we have a huge range of experience among trappers and a large range of projects. Some people are trapping their back yard, some their life style block and some large blocks of native bush. Some have 5 traps, some 50 and some 500. This makes it very difficult to analyse with any degree of statistical relevance. Some people swear by certain lures out of a sample of 5 traps. Then there are the different species we trap for…and so it goes on. A decent survey with a citizen science approach could cover this. Needs a statistically (scientific) designed form to collect the information on. Needs a co-ordinator. Maybe there is a role for TrapNZ in this? Just thinking aloud at this stage
I think you are on to something here. Trap NZ must have a ‘back door’ to all our data for a data scientist to pull together a comprehensive look at what lure kills best what traps are most successful ect, ect all across all our trap lines and bait stations all over NZ.
Would Predator Free NZ have the funds to employ such a person?
My introduction to trapping in 2009, was advice from DOC and BOPRC - both completely different so we decisded to work it out for ourselves. Our work is in sand dunes and wetlands. After 14 years I reckon you just need a whole array of tools, and work out what works in which sites. Nothing works everywhere, we have the full range of critters, cats, ferrets, stoats, weasels, rats, Hh, you can never expect one system to work with all species in all sites. So I am not sure that science will actually help, each site is different, animals are very varied, we use DOC 200s, A2, A220 and live capture, they all work, but need to be varied - baits likewise, but forget about ping-pong balls and the like, smell is what attracts - that is science!
I’ll send the report once its complete - probably another week. To answer your questions:
- Yes, we do camera monitoring but only ad hoc at the moment - it’s one of the things we need to ramp up. Our primary source of monitoring is Environment Southland who do a quarterly RTI and an RTC every other year.
- We have an inventory of over 2,000 traps. 150 of those are AT220s, almost 400 A24 traps, the remainder are manual.
- In the true spirit of ‘whack-a-mole’ predator control, with rat numbers suppressed, we have mice tracking at 80%+. That means that mustelids and cats are fat and happy dining on the mouse population. But now that the AT220s are seen as a regular source of food (with a very loud bang as a sort-of dinner bell), it means we have a strategy for where to place leg holds!
- Our JFN funding allowed us to expand our dense trapping network from the 200Ha of the scenic reserve across the whole 1,000Ha of the peninsula. As you’d expect, that created a surge of rat and possum kills… which we’re only just seeing plateau. Now, as we’re turning the focus to cats and mustelids, we’re seeing those kills rise. In May, we killed more mustelids than possums… that’s a first!
Thanks David, I will link your comments to the Experiences with AT220 thread if that’s OK. If you felt able to upload or link your report to Trap NZ that would be very interesting.
Yes I think you are spot on. I am just not certain that Trap NZ has resources for this. I will seek a comment if we don’t hear from them. I also wonder if Predator Free itself could find some money for this. I think it might be money well spent.
Hi this problem with getting info out there has been ongoing for the 20 years I have been involved and also sorting out what is worthwhile from someone opinion.
There was a heap of good research done in the 90"s and early 2000"s by Landcare but trying to find it in their system is hit and miss.
I have had a bit to do with predator free over the years and they have done stories on parts of my work, unfortunatly the Lady who was keen to do more on getting worthwhile stuff out there left.
A couple of years ago I made a suggestion to the CEO on making Living Documents for common areas to help people get started. One example I used was a page on Mustelid Lures, list what is proven to work, pros and cons plus for say salted rabbit which I worked on in 2005 incl a section on how to make and store the Lure. Dehydrated Rabbit is the same .
Tools for DOC traps and how fine tune them , plus placement etc was another subject
What I was looking at was not one persons opinion but a small panel of experianced people to refine methods etc and weed out others. As something new and proven to be good comes along it would get added to the Living Document.
I didn’t get a reply to the suggestion nor to the follow up 6 months later, It’s all abit of a shame as people put in so much work trying to reinvent the wheel. unfortunatly on traps forum it is easy for things to get lost amoungst everything else. Like I did not see the questions on Sentinels which I have had a heap to do with and modifying so I was late in replying and the thread has not been visited by anyone who might benefit
A small example is the two attached photos a simple fold up tool for 220 / 250 and a better safety catch
Thanks Dave, really appreciate your input and depth of experience. The store of information that Landcare keeps and the expert insights that they could provide would be an excellent place to start. From my own experience a letter to the Minister responsible for CRIs and Predator Free might be the way to go. Depending on the level of interest I would be happy to help draft a letter with the input of others old-hands on this site.
…and I like your safety device, much better than the standard piece of bent wire.
Yes I agree as well that Predator Free is a good place to start. In my experience thought they are looking for donations from me rather than the other way around…
But without good statistics and knowledge of each persons situation when commenting on trapping it is a very fine line between someone’s opinion and facts. We need to get to the facts if possible. Haven’t heard anything from Trap NZ but as you say unlikely they have funds to commit to the project.
I do a trap line with FOF (Friends of Flora), they have over twenty years of data with trapping mustelids and rats. They solely use wooden traps (over 1,000) with double DOC 200’s in. Bait is either Erayz or eggs, roughly alternating. They publish catch data monthly for rats and mustelids. For mustelids the presence of a trapped rat seems a very effective lure. In the last 10 years we have recorded peaks of 0.25 rats per trap and 0.08 mustelids per trap. Traps are checked monthly.
Thanks for your comments. I liked your idea of citizens’ science project, although I agree a survey would need to be carefully designed and promoted through a trusted channel such as TrapNZ. Then of course there would need to be some analysis that would require further expertise. I guess one could create a survey via Survey Monkey or the like, but it might be ropey. Not sure I would trust myself to get it right.
Probably worth trying to get something down on paper, then pass around a few people to fine tune. Then make a presentation to Predator Free, TrapNZ and maybe others to get some assistance with data. Good wet day job! Weather too good down this way at moment to afford time away from trapping, track maintenance, new tracks etc.
Hi, I think Predator free would be a good place and really what they were set up to do and have enough contacts to pull stuff together so much more could be done to beefit everyone and groups have a heap of valuable info sitting in computer files.
for example one suggestiob I have made to polytech people writting papers is to analise the 20 years data that is siting on excel and see what locations catch the most stoats, ridges spurs damp gully vegatated etc etc, but they haven’t been keen , Predator free have been sending Cam around the country giving talks and Cam is a good bloke we swap info but his talk is very much what he thinks. I don’t really know what they are up to but predator free don’t seem to getting that much useful stuff to people on the ground, plenty of feel good stories they take from media, this might give them a bit more purpose and back to grass roots helping those on the ground
Good points dave_e and couldn’t agree more. Sounds like Predator Free needs voices from the people doing the work.
Gluing things onto plastic traps, particularly bottle caps, is going to be very difficult because all of that stuff is made of PE or PP which is essentially ungluable. In technical terms it has low surface energy, which is exactly why it’s used because things like food and contaminants won’t stick to it. The downside of this useful feature is that you can’t glue it with conventional adhesive, in particular PE and PP have a surface energy only 50% higher than teflon (PTFE) so any normal glue will just peel off again.
One single-component glue that does seem to handle it is styrene butadiene rubber glue, which you can get from Daiso stores as Konishi-bond adhesive, it’s the stuff that comes in yellow and blue tubes. You can also try B-7000 a.k.a. Chinese cellphone glue, which appears to be styrene butadiene in online videos but I’ve never tried it myself and since it’s a generic label there’s no guarantee what you’ll end up with .
I’ve been trying metallic bottle caps, because mice might nibble away at them. I think that Blu Tack will end up being the easiest, fastest method, and rats might like it.
Boy, your glue knowledge is extensive! I hope that you didn’t spend time doing research on my behalf, because I’m just mucking around. If I can get 1 of these glues in a small container, I’ll definitely give it a go, and pass on my experiences, good or bad, to others.
Thanks.
T-Rex/Tom Cat traps are already very good rat, weasel, and stoat traps, IMO, but there will always predators around that can escape getting killed. If the secondary lure cup modification is successful, people using these traps will do a lot more damage.
Nah, just extensive knowledge of gluing stuff that doesn’t like to be glued :-). If you haven’t got a Daiso store nearby you can get the B-7000 off Trademe for a few dollars, but with the Konishi-bond you know what you’re getting and it’s only $3 a tube.
I agree, useful information Kahikateatree. Another option is to use certain two-part epoxies (e.g. West G/flex 650) after flame treating the PE. Clean surfaces first with isopropanol or acetone. The flame-treatment apparently oxidizes the surface which dramatically improves adhesion. But I would stick (pun intended) with your suggestions!
Another surface-prep option is to chemically etch the surface, which is what the “activator” found in some plastic adhesives does, the secret sauce is actually the “activation” and beyond that the adhesive is just any old thing, typically superglue (cyanoacrylate). However I haven’t found that very effective most likely because they can’t use anything that’s terribly good at the job - to do it properly you’d need nasty stuff like chromic acid which they’re not going to sell in the adhesives rack at Mitre 10.
That’s why I like the single-component glue that’ll handle PE/PP, in theory this shouldn’t be possible but they’ve somehow managed it.
Hi
it might depend on what you want to put in the caps but like I said further up the chain I just put hard lures like walnuts or prefeed pellets behind the trip plate or further up by springs and it works fine, if I wanted to attach a cap ( which you then have to clean out ) I think I would try a mechanical fastener like small screw etc, which also eliminates any chance of residue chemical smell potentially putting off wary rats. ,certainally plenty of rats around my Avo block and catching more Noway rats than I have ever caught in 20 years.