In early January, high trapping lines between Dart Valley and the west Matukituki Valley were checked and found the entrances to all 45 traps blocked off by strategically placed rocks, DOC said in a release.
All the traps from Shelter Rock hut to Dart hut down the Rees Valley had also been triggered, or had rocks placed in front of their doors, staff later found.
“This means someone has made the effort to disarm more than 150 remote traps in total across two locations,” DOC Operations manager Whakatipu David Butt said.
“At this time of the year this line of traps catches numerous predators, including stoats.
“This is a critical time to have protection for native species through trapping. The people who have done this to the traps will be responsible for an increase in the death of many individuals from our taonga species.”
Stoats are the number one killer of many of New Zealand’s endangered native species. They are an introduced species.
“We have a team of hardworking DOC rangers, Southern Lakes Sanctuary staff and volunteers who put in a lot of hard graft to ensure our trapping network is effective,” Butt said.
“It is very concerning someone – or potentially several people - covered challenging terrain and clambered through bush to find these traps and block them off so predators cannot enter. It means we will see an increase in predators.”
DOC’s Takahē Recovery Group is working to establish a new population of the birds on and around Mt Aspiring. There are concerns those birds will be at risk if traps in the area are found to be compromised as well.
DOC said trapping is considered a humane method of removing introduced predators from National Parks to protect native birds, lizards, and invertebrates.
It added that nature in New Zealand is unique and special. Most of it is only found here, and evolved without the introduced predators DOC and other conservation organisations strive to control.
Once our species are gone from here, they’re gone from everywhere, DOC said.
- APL
