The Queenstown Times in March spoke to Department of Conservation Te Anau programme manager, biodiversity, Lindsay Wilson before he left to assist with rat, mouse, mongoose and cat eradication on the island of Oahu.
Now back in New Zealand after the three-week trip, Mr Wilson said the Kaena Point eradication had been a "great success", with only a small number of mice remaining in the fenced off reserve.
"We are still hoping to get rid of the mice, the last few ones, but certainly with the rats, mongoose and cats, we achieved that, which was pretty cool."
The Kaena Point reserve is an important site for endangered flora and fauna, which, like their New Zealand counterparts, are particularly vulnerable as they evolved without natural predators.
The peninsula is the only place in the Hawaiian Islands where the threatened laysan albatross still breeds.
Since a predator-proof fencing and eradication programme was started 10 years ago by Eric Van der Werf, of Pacific Rim Conservation, the albatross population has jumped from one breeding pair to 40.
One trap taken to Hawaii for testing was a "self-resetting" carbon-dioxide gas canister-powered device which Doc has been working on for the past four or five years, and Mr Wilson said Hawaiian conservators were "very excited" about the possibilities of the traps for controlling mongoose, which, like stoats in New Zealand, attack ground-nesting birds.
Another Doc-designed ferret killing trap installed during a trip three years ago had worked "really well", prompting Fish and Wildlife Service rangers to order "a whole lot more".
Mr Wilson will host his Hawaiian counterparts when they travel to New Zealand in December to attend eradication conferences and visit programmes in Te Anau.
For now, Mr Wilson is focusing on local programmes such as the eradication of deer and stoats from Secretary Island in Doubtful Sound.
The almost 700 deer that roamed the island had been whittled down to "less than 10", and stoat numbers were such that Doc was "confident enough" to release takahe and rock wrens there over the past year.
