Mahurangi West pest milestones

Community conservation group Mahurangi West Pest (MWP) has reached two major milestones – 2000 traps in the field and the removal of more than 10,500 pests from its 3500-hectare operational area.

Formed five years ago, it now has about 140 volunteers and has eradicated over 3500 possums.

MWP founder and chair Brian Bramell said their pest control efforts had brought visible recovery to the catchment they cover, from Puhoi River north to Cowan Bay Road, and from the old State Highway 1 to the coast including Jamieson Bay, Pukapuka Road and Sullivan’s Bay in Mahurangi West Regional Park.

“We’ve reached a tipping point where the vegetation is starting to come back,” he said.

“We had puriri trees out here around the Mahu West Hall that were being wiped out, they were down to sticks, and now they’re thriving again.

“The bird life is also up significantly. The other day I was sitting out here on my property at Opaheke Point and I counted 15 tui. The Te Muri Regional Park area had a dotterel bird family that produced offspring for the first time in 10 years.”

The work MWP does also protects several rare species.

“We’ve discovered that we have the Austro-Asian bittern. There’s only maybe about 1000 of them left in the world,” Bramell said.

“We have a banded rail, which is another rare bird, and we’ve discovered there are bats living in the area. We’ve identified these rare species so we’re targeting different programmes to help them.”

One of the group’s programmes is focused on strengthening its border defences against invasive pests.

“We’re working on a buffer where we’re starting to trap the State Highway 1 border intensively to stop things from coming in. We’ve got to get control of that border,” he said.

Beyond pest control, Bramell hoped to spark a wider discussion on climate change policy and, in particular, how carbon credits were allocated.

“Every possum we kill saves vegetation, saves trees,” he said.

“But if we instead went out and planted pine trees, which are terrible for the environment, never harvested and provide a fire hazard, we’d get carbon credits for that.

“We’ve eradicated 3500 possums, on average about a 1000 a year, and get nothing. The possums that we’ve killed would have eaten about 40 metric tonnes of vegetation every year.”

He added, “A wetland can absorb carbon 50 times faster than a mature forest. But every time we do a wetlands restoration we get no carbon credits for it. That needs to be reviewed.

“If we could get carbon credits for pest removal, we could put out twice as many traps in the field, kill twice as many possums and save even more vegetation.

“We could fund all the pest control programmes across NZ using carbon credits and do a better job with climate change issues than is being done right now.”

Presently MWP is funded through private donations, council and “digging into our own pockets, so support from locals is welcome”.

“We certainly take donations, and are always looking for volunteers,” Bramell said.

“We’re also looking at getting some corporate sponsors. ITM Warkworth, for example, has been very generous providing us with materials for our work.”

For more information or to volunteer email Brian at blbcims@gmail.com