It seems to me that helping out with local trapping efforts will be a more popular hobby while the Covid threat is high. It might be a good time to make more traps and trap lines, establish new blocks. Helpers get exercise, while doing real good for the environment, and they can stay safe. There could well be a lot of able-bodied workers standing down from their normal jobs for two weeks or more, who can still do trapping in their local areas.
Hi Zorro83.
You may first want to consider DOC’s position (advising against basically) as on this page:
Look for the heading “Don’t check traplines” about 2/3 of the way down the page.
Cheers.
Check with the relevant landowner. Wellington City Council and Regional Council have both asked volunteers to suspend trapping activity on their land to reduce risk of interaction with others but also emergency call outs for lost or injured trappers.
So if one did does that mean the data is invalid?
Yes same in Auckland. All trapping has been suspended apart from on your own property. I would love it to continue with the right protocols.
A little frustrating as I have one trap within our property ( in a National Park) and two within less tha 100m of boundary but I can do one and not the other two !!
I would have considered checking traps an essential service but apparently not
Luckily all mine are within 100m of my home, however I don’t know if it is other people’s experience but since the lockdown (coincidentally) my traps have hardly caught a thing. Pre-lockdown I was having to re-set my rat traps several times a night. Seems the possums and the rats have stopped coming down to feed. They are defnitely there, I can see and hear the possums munching like cows on the puriri and kohekohe leaves and the rats are scurrying along the limbs/boughs of the canopy just like usual, however my traps remain empty. Maybe they are just not wanting peanut butter currently. Any ideas?
There is a Health and Safety head out there raising itself…
Certainly all clear to resume trapping once we’re in Level 2, on the DOC website. Still need to use Covid precautions.