A gathering of like minds
It was a pleasure to host Claudia Babirat to our AKV monthly meeting. Claudia spoke about her involvement with the Brighton Trapping Group and about the successes and challenges so far. It was inspiring to hear how the project has not only brought the community together, it’s also resulted in a lot of amazing native plants and animals returning to people’s properties. Claudia spoke about how she enjoys co-ordinating the group but that it can be a lot to take on at times - something we admit we’ve run into at times at AKV.
She shared a few trapping tips with us including:
change your bait type frequently
put out a trail camera to see what creatures are actually visiting
freshly caught mice make excellent bait
if your trap’s not catching anything, try moving it somewhere else
The Kaikorai catchment goes down to the Kaikorai estuary, and the Brighton Trapping Project covers the area on the other side of the estuary. Maybe one day we’ll be able to wave across the water as we’re working on our respective patches!
We also heard from Paul Southworth, who delivered our ‘Inspiring Conservationist’ segment. He told us about Jamie Hickling, who is leading the Hikaroroa Mt Watkin Conservation Group. The group formed in 2023 and is co-ordinating across land owners, mana whenua and local agencies to remove a vareity of mammalian predators from the Hikaroroa area.
Beth Wishart took our ‘Bird of the Month’ segment by beginning with a bird quiz. She then taught us about how to spot a Chaffinch by looking for its big chunky bill and noticing its white patch on its wings. She told us a little about its story of how it came to be introduced to New Zealand Aotearoa in the 1860s and that two birds escaped the ship at Nugget Point!
Paul then finished the meeting by sharing some notices about volunteering roles we have going, and our upcoming events.
Thank you to everyone who came and especially to Claudia for a thoroughly interesting presentation!
Photo credits: Barb Long
