Restoring the balance of nature along the Kaikōura coastline

A trapline snakes its way along the coast between the Awatere River in Marlborough and Oaro River in North Canterbury.

It's there to protect endangered native birds from introduced predators.

The Te Tau Wairehu o Marokura Predator Control Project has a $2 million contract to establish and maintain the 127-kilometre line.

The project employs 11 staff and is managed by Rawiri Manawatu from Te Rūnanga o Kaikōura.

"This mahi was taught to me by our treaty partners ECan (Environment Canterbury) and DOC (Department of Conservation), so we can do it ourselves within our own iwi region."

Cosmo Kentish-Barnes caught up with the team on the beach at Kaikōura where they were bird monitoring and collecting data.

"We're doing a two-kilometre stretch today," Rawiri says.

"We're checking the nests for egg hatches and we also have traps along this section."

The traps are strategically placed on the edge of the vegetation and so far this year there's been some good success.

Seventeen-year-old Rex Allen, one of the team which made 1100 traps for the project, is at the trapline.

"All up this year we have 782 that we've caught, I think."

The most common pests are rats, hedgehogs, stoats and weasels.

"On the phone we use a Trap NZ app which shows where all our traps are and if we catch something we enter in the data about the species," he says.

Brett Cowan, the field supervisor, worked for 10 years as a DOC ranger and brings a lot of expertise and passion to the project.

"This is important work because this is about the sustainability of our taonga species, and in terms of kaitiaki, it means continuing the legacy that our ancestors left," he says.

He watches a pair of tiny banded dotterels or pohowera hover over a nest with his binoculars.

"This is one of the taonga species here, we're protecting them and the oystercatcher or tōrea."

Banded dotterels/pohowera eggs are particularly vulnerable to predators as they are so exposed.

"When we say the word 'nest' people might think of a nest of twigs, a little round thing, but what we're actually talking about is just a hole in the stones," Rawiri says.

The dotterels' large eggs look just like pebbles on the beach, but that's not enough to keep hungry pests from finding them, according to team member Sabina Aitken.

"Because they have a really strong smell, the predators can be really far away and smell them and they'll come up and get the eggs."

The mother of four was working in traffic control before she joined the team and she's loving the mahi.

"It's so different to anything else I’ve done. We get heaps of training, we've done all our certificates, so if we wanted to we could work anywhere in New Zealand, and Rawiri gives us the chance to be leads for different projects."

"So we do this bird monitoring, then trapping and on Thursdays and Fridays we go down to Oaro and do native planting, weed control and spraying," she says.

Project co-ordinator Rawinia Thomas helps organise all the daily operations, does the background planning and admin and runs the project's Facebook page.

"I've gone from the corporate hotel world to somewhere where I can utilise all my computer skills and knowledge and put it into something that's bettering the future generation.

She says the team are working with seven local primary schools, to teach them about trapping, bird monitoring and are setting them up to start their own school trapping programmes.

“We've also started a community group that allows members to trap in their backyards and feed their data into the Predator Control Project.”