36 Boffa Miskell Ltd | Pest Animal Management Plan | Wharekirauponga Compensation Package | 30 May 2022 10.0 Pest animal monitoring 10.1 Overview Ongoing monitoring and adaptive responses are key to effective predator management. Monitoring in other frog recovery sites (including Whareorino) show that control is frequently either inadequate or ineffective, allowing (for example), rat densities in the frog recovery area to increase to 60% tracking (TTI) in some years (Easton, 2021). Within the WAPMA, well-established monitoring tools will be used to monitor pest presence and assess their densities against the intended targets, and to initiate further control if particular thresholds are exceeded (as stated in Section 12.2). This section outlines the monitoring methods and protocols, namely for chew cards, camera traps, trap-catch indices, and new monitoring technology. Biodiversity outcome monitoring is also important to determine the success of pest control at not only reducing pest populations, but achieving the intended biodiversity outcomes. Regarding frogs, a draft frog monitoring programme has yet to be developed, pending discussions with frog experts in DOC and Council so that a consensus on effective monitoring techniques can be agreed. 10.2 Chew card methods 10.2.1 Description Chew cards are a common, cost-effective, and sensitive detection and monitoring tool suitable for determining the presence, and provide a coarse index of relative abundance, of a range of pests, including rats, mice, and possums. Chew cards, rather than wax tags, have been found to be more effective at attracting possums and rodents, and are recommended by DOC in their National Biodiversity Monitoring and Reporting Framework (Forsyth et al., 2018). Chew card indices do not require calibration with other possum monitoring indices (e.g. leg-hold or wax tag indices; Forsyth et al., 2018), so can be directly compared to these data if required. Tracking tunnel lines, another widely-used pest animal monitoring method in New Zealand, are not suitable for obtaining reliable indices of possum abundance, meaning an additional monitoring method for possums would be required and monitoring would become less costeffective. Chew cards have been found to have higher rates of detections for mice than tracking tunnels, and correlate to tracking tunnel rates for rats (Sweetapple & Nugent, 2011). The higher rates of detections for mice makes them a suitable choice over tracking tunnels for this project. 10.2.2 Chew card spacing At minimum, there will be at least 11 lines of chew cards, as recommended for areas greater than 501 ha. Chew card lines will contain 10 chew cards spaced 20 m apart (i.e. along 180 m-
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