Thread: Decades of 1080….before and after

Originally Posted by Woody

The actual costs averave over $60 per hectare. If they offered that for gridded trapping the ques for the career would be very long; and they know it. The cost would be paid out per three to four years so employees working over ratational areas would still achieve a substantial income.

Whats the per hectare cost of cutting tracks, carrying in traps and the checking/rebaiting of them? I'd say at least 10x that. I don't think its quite the career you imagine.

The more area's we can band together to do hunter lead pest control through trapping then the less area's will get hit by 1080... I'd hope at least.

Rakia herd is at risk right now for planned 1080 drops in the coming months, I wonder if we had good trapping happening in lots of the valleys if that would have changed things. Or maybe trapping will never be enough on its own?

Originally Posted by Woody

The actual costs averave over $60 per hectare. If they offered that for gridded trapping the ques for the career would be very long; and they know it. The cost would be paid out per three to four years so employees working over ratational areas would still achieve a substantial income.

How many ha can one trapper trap [no toxins] covering all species as a full time job ?

Been thru all this in past threads and not going to write it all over again. In very simple terms for you each trap position will cater for 2 ha. A 100 position grid line will cover 200 ha over a disyance of 10000m or 10 km. Repeat the monitoring of these positions around three times.
Work it thru. Allow time for line cuutting of permanent grid type pattrrn adjusted for catchment shape. It had been done before and should become a fully formalised system elsewhere.

Originally Posted by Woody

Been thru all this in past threads and not going to write it all over again. In very simple terms for you each trap position will cater for 2 ha. A 100 position grid line will cover 200 ha over a disyance of 10000m or 10 km. Repeat the monitoring of these positions around three times.
Work it thru. Allow time for line cuutting of permanent grid type pattrrn adjusted for catchment shape. It had been done before and should become a fully formalised system elsewhere.

My presumption is you are talking about Doc type kill traps targetting mustelids and rats ?
Well if you think a trap every 2 ha will cover rats you have no chance. North Island forest , a male rat has a range of 1.1ha , females the range was down as low as 0.3 ha. That is a shit load of rats [particularly females] that will never even see your trap !

What density will you use on cats and type of trap ? Possums and type of trap ?

200 ha per 10km line = $13,000+ . @ $65+.
Plenty of leeway and time. Go figure. Kill rat another comes along. Put 10 rat traps around each position etc. It's called initiative..

Originally Posted by Woody

200 ha per 10km line = $13,000+ . @ $65+.
Plenty of leeway and time. Go figure. Kill rat another comes along. Put 10 rat traps around each position etc. It's called initiative..

so now we have up to 11 traps per ha ??

No there is not plenty of lee way and sure as there aint plenty of time if you strike a mast year... you wont be able to get around your traps quick enough. They will be full 2hrs after you have checked them or the bait will off been eaten off by mice...

At work we get through about 30-40 DOC 250 traps per day. It gets time consuming when you do it properly (don’t touch the bait with hands, clean out the soupy hedgehog, grub the grass off the entryway of the trap but not too deep to leave a puddle) This is with a drive time of <30 minutes to sight. The running cost of an employee is ~$500 per day. (wages/vehicle/training/ppe etc) Servicing cost per trap per day works out at around $15.

I do about 50 a24 per day on my volunteering on my day off. That’s a pretty big day. Going from the above you could say $10 per service for A24 traps.

Transport to sight is often the biggest thief of time, if you’re not trapping close to the road the numbers above go out the window.

Originally Posted by Woody

Been thru all this in past threads and not going to write it all over again. In very simple terms for you each trap position will cater for 2 ha. A 100 position grid line will cover 200 ha over a disyance of 10000m or 10 km. Repeat the monitoring of these positions around three times.
Work it thru. Allow time for line cuutting of permanent grid type pattrrn adjusted for catchment shape. It had been done before and should become a fully formalised system elsewhere.

Possums aren't evenly spread across forest, they use ridges and have legs to get there so I agree pretty easy to run bait stations or trap lines that will keep numbers down. After all it is because of ground based poisoning (cyanide) and traps that kept the possum population low over the whole of NZ for years until the anti fur green lobby buggered the market.

Originally Posted by Moa Hunter

Possums aren't evenly spread across forest, they use ridges and have legs to get there so I agree pretty easy to run bait stations or trap lines that will keep numbers down. After all it is because of ground based poisoning (cyanide) and traps that kept the possum population low over the whole of NZ for years until the anti fur green lobby buggered the market.

In regard to possums only: rather than just keep numbers down, bureaucrats and bean counters can opt for aerial application that can approach and sometimes achieve statistical 100% kills. Post application monitoring typically ran at around 97-100 percent in my experience. Not to mention the rat by-kill.
It’s a fiscal no brainer.
In my opinion the fur industry kept a cap on possum numbers just like government cullers kept a cap on deer numbers post war, a loosing battle.

Take $65 per ha off the aerial poison indistry and offer it to ground based and see what happens. Money talks. E.g. The deer wars. Enterprising businesses and people might surprise the currrent thinking.

I thought an issue of relying on traps is the inaccessibility/lack of tracks/general denseness of large sections of the bush.

That is a big factor right?

Originally Posted by Woody

Take $65 per ha off the aerial poison indistry and offer it to ground based and see what happens. Money talks. E.g. The deer wars. Enterprising businesses and people might surprise the currrent thinking.

Exactly. Money talks.
The deers wars came and went. Now deer numbers steadily increase without the same magnitude of pressure from private enterprise as cost, compliance and complexity increase and markets change with the passage of time.

Originally Posted by Moutere

In regard to possums only: rather than just keep numbers down, bureaucrats and bean counters can opt for aerial application that can approach and sometimes achieve statistical 100% kills. Post application monitoring typically ran at around 97-100 percent in my experience. Not to mention the rat by-kill.
It’s a fiscal no brainer.
In my opinion the fur industry kept a cap on possum numbers just like government cullers kept a cap on deer numbers post war, a loosing battle.

I dont have the records anymore but in a nutshell, when skin prices were very high the annual export sales through PGG and Wilson Neil of dried skins ( 1970's - mid 80's ) were declining each year because pressure on the possum population was greater than reproduction could support. There was not a square metre of bush anywhere that hadn't been poisoned or trapped. Every winter thousands of blokes headed into bush camps, many being flown in. As an example a friend of mine spent three months in the Mungo, tents and skin drying shelters flown in. Wool packs of dried skins flown out most graded 'firsts'
There is no question that 1080 drops reduce possum populations better than anything else which is a positive but there are negatives as well and continual drops are very injurious to birds and invertebrates.

Agreed. However the pest problem costs are not directly linked to any market. The heli shooting of deer was never subsidised by govt either and if this were the generally case today I have no doubt there would be more of it done. There may be a few especially targeted areas but these just serve to demonstrate there are alternatives to aerial poison.