Kawau community gets behind its ‘rat pack’ volunteer team

Kawau’s community-led rat control initiative is taking shape – applying for funding, organising communications, establishing team leaders and building up a list of “rat pack” members on the island.

Kawau Community Conservation Trust (KCCT) has applied to Auckland Council and Predator-Free NZ for nearly $90,000 to help buy traps, bait stations and bait, said KCCT chair Caroline Boot, who is spearheading the initiative with fellow trustees Pippa Tabron, Sue-Ellen Craig and Greg Tabron.

Funding will also support team leaders and volunteers to get backyard rat control underway, she said.

“Landowners can choose traps or bait stations, as well as their preferred bait to use on their properties.

Keen team leaders working in most of Kawau’s neighbourhoods are assessing what controls are already in place, and who can help and who needs help to install, monitor and service rat controls around their houses.”

The KCCT initiative emerged amid community debate over a council-led proposal laid out last year to exterminate rats, stoats, possums and wallabies on the island.

Following consultation, council modified the original plans, and now proposes eradicating wallabies and possums first, in a project that would begin in about a year’s time (MM, March 4).

Council said targeting rats – a more contentious element, since it would require bait to be laid on every property – would only come later, beginning in winter 2026 at the earliest. It did, however, voice support for the KCCT effort to control rat numbers.

Boot said the team leaders and volunteers were well known in their respective bays – Lisa Gubb (Pembles Bay), Sharon Harper (North Cove), Shelley Futcher (Stockyard Bay), Mike Davies and Greg Tabron (Schoolhouse and Harris Bay), Jasmine Hweh (Sunny Bay) and Steve Hoyle (South Cove).

“They’re enthusiastically contacting their neighbours, and building the database of committed islanders who will control rats on their own, and each other’s properties.”

Council, Rodney Local Board and several like-minded community groups had offered training, and KCCT had put together a simple survey for those keen to join the effort to wipe out rats on Kawau, she said.

For more information: www.kawauconservation.co.nz 

To complete the survey: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/HCZBGYW