A contractor for the Routeburn Dart Wildlife Trust will next month begin setting up nearly 1000 traps in the braided river habitat at the head of Lake Wakatipu.
Trust executive officer Geoff Hughes said the trust had raised more than $200,000 in the past six months to establish the trapline.
That included $100,000 from the Central Lakes Trust and grants from the Otago Community Trust, Otago Regional Council, the Greenwood Environmental Trust and proceeds from a fundraising ball in August organised by tourism company Real Journeys.
Set up in 2013, the trust already funds predator control work beside the Routeburn Track in the upper Routeburn Valley and Hollyford Face. The traps kill rats and stoats preying on declining populations of forest and alpine bird species.
Now the trust is throwing its blanket of protection over the Rees-Dart river delta to protect five species classified by the Department of Conservation as either endangered or threatened: wrybills, black-fronted terns, banded dotterels, black-billed gulls and black stilts.
Dr Hughes said a specialist team of Wellington-based contractors would spend several days next month carrying out a baseline survey of the habitat’s bird population.
The results would be used to monitor the effectiveness of the trapping operation in the coming years.
He was pleased with the trust’s progress, which he put down to its business-like approach and extensive consultation with government agencies, runanga and landowners.
The funding it had secured had come on the back of a feasibility study, a detailed scoping report on the project’s logistics and a business case.
It was now turning its attention towards securing operational funding to maintain the traps.
"I think we’re going very nicely. We’ve had a good 14 months but we’ve got to keep progressing to sustain the project."
To that end, it would produce a promotional video in the next few months.
