Students check rat traps at Mākara Model School. Photo: RNZ / Samuel Rillstone
Students at a small, semi-rural school west of Wellington City are trapping rats in the playground and feeding them to the eels, in the name of biodiversity.
Mākara Model School is helping protect the 200 kiwi now living in Wellington's eastern hills, as part of the Capital Kiwi project.
On Monday, Conservation Minister Tama Potaka and Department of Conservation (DOC) representatives, including director-general Penny Nelson, visited the school.
Discussion documents were released, seeking public feedback on DOC's future work programme - including the goals of Predator Free 2050 - and the minister took the opportunity to tour the school's trapping regime.
Mimi, 11, was part of a small group of Mākara students tasked with checking the schools traps, indoors and out, each day.
She said they checked the traps each morning, resetting them with replenished bait in the form of peanut butter and then feeding any trapped rats to the eels in the nearby stream.
Classmate Molly, 12, had eagerly taken up the mantle from the previous year's group of seniors.
"Last year, it was this huge group of boys who did it, none of the girls helped," she said. "This year, I was pretty keen to do it."
Checking and resetting the traps was "pretty fun", until there was a live rat to contend with.
Conservation Minister Tama Potaka at Mākara Model School. Photo: RNZ / Samuel Rillstone
Upon discovering a not-quite-dead rat on their rounds, Molly said the solution was to finish the job with a rock.
"It's pretty freaky the first time," she said, but both girls were focused on the wider cause.
With the Capital Kiwi project regularly releasing birds in the surrounding hills, reducing rat numbers was even more important. The local eel population benefitted too.
New principal James Appleton said students also learned about the circle of life.
"It's skills they probably wouldn't be learning at a school in the city."
The school had trapped rats for more than a decade, both to protect the area's biodiversity and to keep rodents out of the classrooms.
Capital Kiwi founder Paul Ward said his relationship with the school went way back - his mum actually got her first teaching job there.
"We've got really close connections with the kura, since the beginning of the project," he said.
"Kids are the future, and if we're wanting to do something as long-term and ambitious as restoring kiwi to the hills of our capital city, getting those tamariki engaged is a critical part of that mission."
Their efforts had contributed to making the place safe for kiwi to breed and thrive.
"These are kids that know the difference between a Norway rat and a ship rat," he said. "They trap possums."
"One of the most awesome things to note was when we asked them today, 'Do you know what a kiwi sounds like?' and virtually every hand in that school of 70-odd kids went up."
Photo: RNZ / Samuel Rillstone
Minister Tama Potaka said protecting the environment was a team effort.
"The government sets the regulatory framework and the statutory framework. Businesses who can move with alacrity and really quickly around decision-making, and community, often bring the muscle - the woman power and the manpower - to do things."
DOC director general Penny Nelson said work by groups like Mākara Model School was "absolutely critical" to achieving predator-free status.
"We've got a really big goal to be predator-free by 2050, but there's no way DOC can do it on their own. What I've loved about this morning is just seeing how excited the kids are to get out there trapping."
In Mākara, it was working. Molly said the number of rats they were logging from their traps was declining.
"We had this chart and it was [tracking] how many rats we got each term. There were so many rats in the beginning and now we get maybe two each day, so it's definitely gone downwards."
That means less food for the eels - but a safer haven for the capital's kiwi population to thrive.
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