It’s been a few years since I posted here. A lull in my Canadian summer hopefully will result in this post and two more. I was in NZ for a full two years during covid and again for six months ending in May of this year. Five months of my covid time and six months last winter were spent full time volunteer predator trapping. My tally is 700+ possums, 500+ rats and 100+ stoats and weasels. Dare I say I must be near record territory for someone on a tourist visa! I’ll be returning this winter for more of the same. I call it buying another summer. My decision to return was aided by the visa I received last year when I applied for my extended visa. My cover letter boasting, as above, resulted in a not asked for visa good for three years with multiple entries of up to six months duration.
The bio folk at the airport weren’t quite as open minded though when I declared these. They kept them, saying they would be inspected and forwarded if allowed. No response to a follow up letter I wrote later asking for specifics on why they were barred from entry.
Their descriptions read:
Mink Master – Strong gland lure combined with essential oils and weasel musk appeals to the mink’s territorial nature and brings them in.
Feline Fix – Loaded with bobcat glands for a natural cat odour, this Feline Fix is a thick lure that also works great on fox and raccoon.
Tree Climber – This Tree Climber lure is a mild, yet sweet, lure. An irresistible blend of natural ingredients bring in marten and fisher. Also excellent for bobcat, fox and beaver.
Their intent is to get the animal to the area of the trap. Anything like them available in NZ? At $17 a bottle I’d be willing to try again. Perhaps best I make a written request prior and include the samples. Are they worth trying? I have had success using a box knife to cut the scent glands of male stoats to musk up cotton wool. (Go figure that it even attracts rats! Very dumb rats??)
Rather wicked doing it that way though. Perhaps a tad nicer to just open a bottle.
Bio control did allow me to bring in this catnip / silvervine mix though.
It was first trialled in town with a trail camera showing two neighbourhood cats, at different times, coming to investigate overnight. A tablespoon or two was wrapped in fine copper mesh and the ball left to hang on a wire. Tooth marks were evident in the mesh. No joy though in attracting anything with it in the field. Silvervine is more attractive to cats than catnip and 75% of cats not attracted to catnip are attracted to silvervine. Prior to bringing it I pulverized the original mix with a blender.
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I’m angry that biosecurity doesn’t allow calls/musk lures into NZ. Even the synthetic ones are banned! How, exactly, are these lures going to harm wildlife?
People are allowed to possess potentially invasive exotic pets, like birds (already becoming invasive), gerbils, hamsters, guinea pigs, turtles, tortoises, lizards, salamanders, newts, and skinks. So, that’s okay with biosecurity, but processed animal products aren’t permitted?
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Thanks for doing so much work in NZ! We need to clone you about 500 times and we’d be done with Predator Free 2050!
Has anyone thought about some sort of trap or machine pumping out scent lures? Like actually pumping aerosols into the air? With the idea that you could lure in pests from hundreds of meters away?
Maybe some solar powered thing that has a bottle of lure. It gets sprayed into the air, carried by the wind…
I’m coming at this from the perspective of needing to have fewer traps. We can’t have a trap every 100m all over NZ to catch every rat out there. If they could be 1000m apart, that’s a 25 fold savings.
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Hello there fellow Canadian. Except this one came in 2002 on her “OE” and never went back.
Anyhow, I just picked up this thread now. I once was employed by Biosecurity New Zealand so here are my thoughts.
A you found out, biosecurity in New Zealand is super strict. Every biological product coming to NZ has to meet some “import health standard”. These are written following assessments of the biosecurity risks that each product might pose. This means that most biological products are not allowed by default unless there is a standard that allows it. I suspect that scent lures for pests have never been assessed because never been imported commercially. So no standard, no import.
Sometimes “personal consignments” of some products are allowed, but the people at the border thought to use caution here (possibly following advice from expert risk assessors). I recall the case of deer lures (usually made from urine and for hunters to use to attract their quarry) not being allowed because of the risk of CWD (chronic wasting disease, an incurable and non-eradicable prion disease affecting deer and elk in North America. The prion is a really nasty infectious thing that is present in all tissues and secretions of affected deer, does not die/degrade and can accumulate in the environment. Although some might say it could help reduce the wild deer population in NZ, it could also affect the livelihoods of deer farmers and NZs export economy). Anyhow, I wonder if your mustelid and cat lures may have been classified as unknown risk that was not worth taking…
To come back on a comment from another poster, there are no hamsters or gerbils in NZ. Their import, along with the imports of exotic birds, reptiles and amphibians, is not permitted. Most exotic pets that are here came before the existence of import health standards, or when they (or their equivalent predecessors) were permitting their import.
Nga mihi
