Research and operational news from Predator Free 2050 LimitedQUARTERLY. ISSUE 4. APRIL 2020

In the wake of COVID-19

To help inform the government’s economic stimulus in response to COVID-19 we have prepared a prospectus of “shovel-ready” projects around the country.

By accelerating existing projects and fast tracking pipeline projects we’ve identified the potential for 457 long term predator free jobs, 307 of them that could be created within 12 months.

A government investment of $34m per annum would enable us to tackle 1.5m hectares of biodiversity-rich urban, farmed and forest land over the next five years, providing a major boost for regional employment, technology innovation and the Predator Free 2050 goal.

Thanks to everyone who helped us pull this analysis together quickly.

Meanwhile, Predator Free 2050 Limited-funded projects moved quickly in response to government directives to prevent the spread of COVID-19, closing down field operations as the country shifted to Alert Level 4.

We appreciate the clear and considered communications the projects have initiated with staff and communities.

Hawke’s Bay Regional Council has withdrawn from its Mahia operation, expecting that any re-infestation of clear areas will be manageable in the long term due to the relatively long breeding cycle of possums.

Taranaki Regional Council has instructed contractors in its urban, rural and Zero Density areas to pause work for four weeks.

As Te Korowai o Waiheke shut down its stoat trapping network a month after it was deployed. A dashboard database recorded progress in almost real time as lockdown approached; a 30-hour marathon effort by its field team and Auckland Council biosecurity rangers. The team removed rabbit baits to avoid it becoming rancid but left eggs to retain some visual interest in the trapping network.

Capital Kiwi has left its stoat trapping network active but will not be servicing it. Paul Ward reports his team had just rebaited the entire network, including replacing all the A24 lure pumps ensuring that two-thirds of the network will be effective for up to three months.

On Miramar Peninsula, where rat numbers have dropped from tens of thousands to “tens” of rats, Predator Free Wellington is using the lockdown to appeal to residents to step up their vigilance. In an update they ask:

“We know we have a very low level of rat activity left on the peninsula and during autumn these rats will be more mobile seeking shelter for the colder winter months. This means there is a higher probability of them coming into contact with people (moving into houses etc).

• If you are happy to have a look in the devices on your property, please do so and let us know if you see anything.

• If you’re out on a self-isolation walk (in line with Ministry of Health protocols) and happen to see a rat caught in one of our traps on the peninsula, please let us know so we can clear it when we are up and running again.

• If you have chew cards or wax tags and notice any chews then take a pic and share with us on facebook.

• If you have a Predator Free Miramar community trap, dust it off and re-set it, it might just be the trap that catches the Last Rat On The Peninsula!”.

The Predator Free Wellington team have created a social cohesion communication plan to support and strengthen predator free communities with a range of safe and creative activities over the lockdown period.

Predator Free Dunedin’s post of March 25 contained sensible advice for those households wanting to continue backyard trapping during lockdown - https://www.predatorfreedunedin.org/news/covid-19

We have been in contact with our Products to Projects and Science Strategy projects, most of which are able to continue with some research and development tasks as staff work from home.

All Predator Free 2050 Limited staff are well set up to continue working during lockdown.

We will work closely with projects to review operational milestones as we emerge from the COVID-19 response period.

Ed Chignell, CEO

D’Urville Island contract signed

Predator Free 2050 Limited and the D’Urville Island Stoat Eradication Charitable Trust have signed a funding agreement to enable the eradication of stoats from the remote Marlborough

Sounds island.

Oliver Sutherland and Angela Fitchett signed the agreement on behalf of trustees on March 17, after 16 years of preparation and planning by the group.

D’Urville Island Stoat Eradication Trustees Oliver Sutherland and Angela Fitchett sign the funding agreement.

The project is the last large landscape project able to be funded from Predator Free 2050 Limited’s 2016 government funding allocation.

The six year, $3.1m project will also receive significant co-funding from the Rata Foundation, NZ Lottery Grants Board (Environment & Heritage Fund), Marlborough District Council and landowners.

The project aims to remove stoats from the rugged 16,782-hectare island, which has 45 permanent residents and around 80 private land titles.

The island is around 15 times bigger than other islands previously cleared of stoats and attention will be given to lessons learned from the attempted stoat eradications on Secretary and Resolution Islands in Fiordland. In addition, alternative trap presentations (A24s, live capture), improved lures (ferret and stoat bedding, automated luring), improved detection and analysis (camera traps and DNA) and novel tools will be available to the project. Particular attention will also be given to the risk of reinvasion, with

trapping on the mainland within five km of the island and an incursion detection system.

Trust Co-Chair Oliver Sutherland said the trust had undertaken its first feasibility study in 2004 and worked to bring all significant land-owners and Ngāti Koata together in support of the project.

Predator Free 2050 Limited CEO Ed Chignell said the project exemplified the challenge and ambition sought in its funded projects and had potential to provide important learnings.

Successful eradication would enable the reintroduction of yellow-crowned kākāriki and South Island kākā, lost due to stoats, protect long-tailed bats still present on the island and add additional security to nearby predator-free islands, such as Stephens Island/Takapourewa, home to 50,000 tuatara.

The project will also create employment and economic opportunities for the island.

Remembering Sir Rob

It was with great sadness that we received the news of the death of Predator Free 2050 Limited Director Sir Rob Fenwick last month.

Rob was instrumental in fostering the predator free movement - acting a director for many of the government-related agencies and charitable groups that contribute to it - and encouraged the government to adopt the Predator Free 2050 goal in 2016.

A gifted communicator, Sir Rob reached out to business, government and community audiences inviting them to add their efforts to looking after our environment. Here’s just one of the memorable speeches Sir Rob gave, to the Environmental Defence Society Conference in 2014.

Rattus Rattus genome sequenced

One of the most significant Predator Free stories of the year slipped under the media radar in the midst of COVID-19 reportage last month.

A New Zealand – Australia collaboration has produced the first full genome sequence of the ship rat.

This new reference genome – now available to international researchers on the National Center for Biotechnology Information genome database – will empower scientists working on critical questions of conservation, evolution and disease prevention.

“This is an important milestone,” says Predator Free 2050 Limited Science Strategy Manager Professor Dan Tompkins. “It will underpin future work on understanding the origins and dispersal of ship rats, the development of novel control mechanisms such as species-specific toxins and help assess the technical potential of gene technologies.”

The genome (the complete set of an organism’s genetic information) was produced using tissue from a wild rat trapped in the Waitakere Ranges near Auckland.

The initial assembly based on short read technology was produced in late 2015 by University of Auckland researcher, Dr Florian Pichlmüller now a research fellow with Genomics Aotearoa, a collaborative genomics and bioinformatics platform involving nine New Zealand universities and Crown Research Institutes.

The New Zealand scientists teamed up with genomic and bioinformatics experts from CSIRO, Australia’s national science agency, to further improve the quality of the genome with state-of-the-art analytical approaches and technologies only recently established in New Zealand. Collectively the team have assembled one of the highest quality mammalian genomes produced to date.

CSIRO Health & Biosecurity and SynBio Future Science Platform scientist, Dr Rahul Rane, who led the work from across the Tasman described CSIRO’s long read genome sequencing methods as creating “highly accurate big lego blocks” and its Hi-C techniques as “bridges between the small and big lego blocks”, which are used to assemble chromosomes and piece together the position of genes in a genome. Cellular material and DNA strands that contain genes deteriorate with time, even in storage. The new techniques have optimised tissue harvesting and DNA extraction

from older samples and further helped reduce research costs.

Ship rats arrived in New Zealand on European ships in the 1800s and are implicated in the extinction of the bush wren, huia, laughing owl, North Island and South Island piopio/ thrush, South Island kokako, South Island snipe and greater short-tailed bat. They are agile climbers and the most widespread and common of the country’s three introduced rat species.

Image: PF2050Ltd/James Russell

First tranche science funding lays platform for goal achievement

The first Predator Free 2050 Limited Science Strategy was launched in 2017 to guide the company’s $1m pa investment in breakthrough science and directed effort into development of new tools, improving current ones, understanding social issues and better handling data. It was designed to support the national goal of achieving by 2025 a science solution capable of eradicating one of the target predators from New Zealand.

It has leveraged $14m of research activity across 18 collaborating universities, government agencies, research institutes and companies.

This has enabled critical advances, including helping Zero Invasive Predators develop an approach to eradicate predators across unfenced backcountry areas of >10,000 hectares, co-funding of The Cacophony Project’s thermal camera technology that increases predator detection sensitivity by up to 50-fold and funding a consortium to map the genome of the ship rat (see above). Outputs are listed under each programme area at https://pf2050.co.nz/funded-projects/

Final projects from this first tranche funding are now being signed up, including an examination of the social and biodiversity outcomes of community conservation (see below) and the utility of drone-mounted thermal cameras for predator detection.

Predator Free 2050 Limited has begun seeking seeking feedback on a draft research strategy for 2020-24, which focusses on overcoming barriers to large scale mustelid and rat eradication.

The benefits of trapping

Predator Free 2050 Limited will fund new research to better understand the conditions that create biodiversity and social outcomes from community-led conservation.

Marie Doole of the Catalyst Group and Danielle Shanahan from Zealandia Sanctuary’s Centre for People and Nature will use interviews, surveys, literature reviews, and in-depth case-studies to identify the social dimensions of a community conservation initiatives that achieve measurable social and environmental outcomes.

The work will be used to inform investment decision-making and outcome assessment and is funded within the Environment and Society programme of Predator Free 2050 Limited’s Science Strategy.

Recent research published by Dr Shanahan found spending time in nature helps people feel better, and becoming involved in a local trapping group can reduce levels of depression, anxiety and stress. Her findings came from a survey of 1200 Wellington city residents.

Miramar’s ‘Rat Man’

A documentary premiered at Miramar’s Roxie Cinema in February powerfully shows the wider social outcomes of trapping and community connection.

It follows Daryl Wilson, a reclusive ex-convict, turn local hero when his state home and the surrounding community of Strathmore Park is overrun by rats.

ChillDocs: Rat Man is available on Vimeo - https://vimeo.com/377680665

NOTED

Predator Free Wellington has published a compelling Quarterly Impact Report

The Predator Free New Zealand Trust is hosting regular webinars during lockdown. You can catch up on them here

The Cacophony Project is repurposing its predator technology for the fight against COVID-19. See here

How are ZIP’s field rangers coping with COVID isolation? See

pf2050.co.nz

(09) 217 3172

Level 7 45 Queen Street Auckland 1010

PO Box 106040 Auckland City 1143

NZ Autotraps opens new factory

NZ Autotraps moved from a Hamilton storage unit to new premises in Whakatane in February, helped by a Provincial Growth Fund grant administered through Predator Free 2050 Limited.

It enabled the company to assemble 120 AT220s, a self-resetting possum and rat trap, in the first month. Four new staff were employed and a new CNC machine centre, lathe, guillotine, rollers and band saw set up on the assembly line.

New factory workers Alex Hyde, Wai Roberts, Dana Ngatai and Haydn Steel on the AT 220 production line.

A design review also prompted changes to the trap’s pump assembly, housings and mounts with production set to shift from 3D printing to injection moulding.

It was all smiles when Predator Free 2050 Limited CEO Ed Chignell visited in early February, though supply issues from China and the COVID-19 lockdown have since slowed and halted production.

Second coordination workshop postponed

Predator Free 2050 Limited’s annual Project Coordination Workshop was an early victim of the COVID-19 response.

We made the call to postpone the annual get together of 80 project staff and advisers ahead of the March 17-18 workshop in Napier.

Instead we are hosting some of the keynotes presentations on Zoom with the registrants over the lockdown period and making them available through our website and social media channels.