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Accelerating interest in trapping pests in the wider Mahurangi area is causing concern among some domestic cat owners.
As of last Tuesday, there were 29 known cats missing in the Warkworth and Mahurangi East area. Some believe the number could be much higher.
“If a cat is hit by a car, you normally find the body on the road, but these cats are disappearing without trace,” Julie Thompson, of Julie’s Animal Refuge, says.
“In my 24 years of looking after cats, I’ve never seen a pattern like this. The cats that are missing are much-loved pets, many are micro-chipped and some would have been wearing collars. There is no way that they could have been mistaken for a feral cat.”
Warkworth resident Michael Faulkner’s six-year-old tabby Floki went missing just over three weeks ago.
After searching his neighbourhood and every possible place he could imagine Floki might have gone, he came to the conclusion that his cat was the victim of a trapper.
“I think there are a few active trappers around the greater Warkworth area who are indiscriminately killing any cat they trap without checking for microchips,” he says.
“We heard Scott’s Landing is losing cats by the dozen and one road at Mahurangi East lost five cats in a month. Someone is clearly wiping these cats out and disposing of their bodies.”
However, Michael admits that proving these claims is very difficult, if not impossible.
Local trapping groups have been adamant that cats are not in their cross hairs.
A Department of Conservation spokesperson says the traps used on conservation land are species specific.
“The construction of the traps is such that they exclude cats which would be too large to fit through the wire matrix that blocks access to the trap,” he said, adding that all traps used on public conservation land comply with the National Animal Welfare Advisory Committee (NAWAC) requirements for humane trapping.
The Forest Bridge Trust is another organisation that is heavily involved in trapping as it builds a ‘bridge’ of 54,000 hectares, connecting the existing wildlife sanctuaries at Mataia Restoration Project in the west to Tawharanui Regional Park in the east.
A spokesperson says landowners are given competency training, manuals on best practise and are signed off by a trainer before being given traps.
Chief executive Craig Presland says the DOC series traps provided by the trust to target mustelids have double off-set entrances, with access holes of less than 70mm. This is to keep the traps safe for native species such as kiwi and weka, but it also stops domestic cats from being able to access the trap mechanism. The possum traps are situated and baited in a species-specific way to target possums.
Presland says to support the future kiwi release on Mt Tamahunga, there has been an increase of live capture traps positioned on the maunga, targeting both ferrets and feral cats.
“These traps are set and serviced by experienced predator control professionals who fully and impeccably follow all legal requirements, including animal welfare requirements,” he says. “All traps deployed are NAWAC compliant, and all live traps are set and checked in full compliance with NAWAC’s code of welfare, which includes checking set traps daily. While these traps are located a considerable distance from residential areas, The Forest Bridge Trust microchip scans any captured cats to ensure they are not domestic.”
Snells Shoreline Conservation Community volunteer Alan James says he encourages people who want to trap pests to join organised groups, where they are given the right instructions, follow correct health and safety, and learn to follow the rules to target the correct species and not domestic pets.
There are a wide range of traps available from shops and on the internet, and they can be set without any regulation or education on their use.
This has raised the suspicion that domestic cats are being caught in traps being set by individual property owners, rather than people who are participating in community trapping projects.
The use of illegal gin traps is not unknown in the area and although wired live capture traps must be inspected daily by law, there is little way of overseeing this requirement.
