More stoats found at sanctuary

The hunt for stoats at Shakespear Open Sanctuary continues, with further success in recent weeks.

A pregnant female stoat got into the wildlife sanctuary at the end of Whangaparāoa Peninsula last spring and gave birth, resulting in the biggest challenge to face the open sanctuary since it opened a decade ago.

By April, five stoats had been caught and early this month one female was trapped live and another found dead in a trap.

Open sanctuaries senior ranger Matt Maitland says the two sites where the stoats were found are about 500m apart.

“Their weights suggest they are from the litter, not the original mother,” he says. “A backlog with the DNA lab means we do not yet know for sure how our various captured stoats are related.”

He says the female recently caught alive had been slowly habituated to the trap tools.

“Using the thermal imaging camera we could see her gaining confidence and this method has paid off. We have been working continuously since we reported our last captures in May and this has now borne fruit.”

Rangers are unable to be sure exactly how many stoats remain in the open sanctuary, but believe the initial female is still at large.

“The science of known litter size indicated we were chasing up to 11 young. So far we have caught seven. We know that at least one remains as it has been spotted on a thermal camera investigating the site where the latest female was caught. This informs our next steps and gives us a head start on where to target this next animal.”

Matt says there is genuine excitement that progress is being made, tempered with healthy realism about the task still ahead.

Stoats are a major threat to all birds, especially species that spend time on, or near, the ground such as saddlebacks (tieke), kiwi and stitchbirds (hihi). The impact on Shakespear’s saddleback population is already being felt. Volunteers expected to find around 100 birds in a tieke survey in March, but found only 30, which Matt says is likely to be because of stoats.

The sanctuary is also home to a growing population of little spotted kiwi – a species that never gets large and strong enough to fend off a stoat. Investigations within the sanctuary revealed a number of sites where stoats keep birds they have killed to consume later. The sites included dead kereru, tui and bellbirds.

Backstories May 5 and May 19, 2021