Stoats – Our Biggest Threat to Kiwi Chicks
Stoats are public enemy number 1 for kiwi chicks. In untrapped areas, 90% of kiwi chicks are killed by stoats in their first six months of life. These tough, smart, killing machines have had a major impact on New Zealand’s kiwi populations.
The stoat: public enemy number one
At the Whangarei Heads we were lucky enough to have a kiwi population of around 80 adult kiwi in 2001. Without trapping, the offspring of these birds didn’t stand much of a chance and eventually we would have no kiwi here. Below you will find links to the annual trapping reports with detailed information regarding predator trapping – now updated for the most recent year’s report.
In 2001 the local Landcare groups got together in a super-group called the Whangarei Heads Landcare Forum (WHLF). Amongst other things, the WHLF started a kiwi recovery project on private land throughout the Heads.
The Department of Conservation was already predator trapping the Bream Head reserve and the WHLF set up a trapping network to compliment this.
The traps are set in tunnels to keep non-target species (like kiwi!) out, and because stoats love tunnels. We have a network of about 250 traps from Bream Head to Parua Bay and across to Kauri Mountain. The traps are baited with salted rabbit and have been effective in reducing the numbers of stoats and other predators (cats, weasels and ferrets).
Kiwi chick survival is way up now and the kiwi population has grown to around 300 kiwi in our backyard.
We are lucky that we are a peninsular as this limits predator reinvasion – but stoats travel large distances and we still catch around 25 stoats each year.
| Total captures (October to September each year) | ||||||||
| Ferret | Stoat | Weasel | Cat | Hedgehog | Rat | Possum | ||
| 2002/2003 | 1 | 55 | 46 | 18 | 65 | 391 | NA | |
| 2003/2004 | 4 | 22 | 21 | 22 | 52 | 319 | 24 | |
| 2004/ 2005 | 1 | 30 | 17 | 38 | 95 | 403 | 285 | |
| 2005/2006 | 0 | 26 | 13 | 29 | 82 | 357 | 191+ | |
| 2006/2007 | 0 | 26 | 8 | 17 | 68 | 304 | 147 | |
| 2007/2008 | 0 | 19 | 22 | 18 | 84 | 346 | 75+ | |
| 2008/2009 | 0 | 21 | 25 | 12 | 112 | 351 | 144+ | |
| 2009/2010 | 0 | 17 | 20 | 20 | 87 | 321 | 139+ | |
| 2010/2011 | 1* | 12* | 2* | 8* | ||||
| Total | 7 | 228 | 174 | 182 | 634 | 2792 | 1005+ | |
* Interim results for 2010/2011 season till Feb 2011
Click on WHLF Trapping Report 2009-2010 for more detailed information. It is noteworthy that the summer of 2009/2010 was the driest on record in Northland.
Click on WHLF Trapping Report 2008-2009 for more detailed information.
And you can compare it to last year’s report by clicking on WHLF Trapping Report 2007-2008 for more detailed information.
