Boffa Miskell Ltd | Pest Animal Management Plan | Wharekirauponga Compensation Package | 30 May 2022 37 long lines), as per best practice for possums (National Pest Control Agencies, 2015) and for both (Ruffell et al., 2015). All chew card lines will need to be ground-truthed to ensure chew card locations are appropriate, accessible and in areas likely to provide preferred habitat for rodents and possums. The same chew card lines are to be used year to year to enable trend monitoring and comparisons. However, lines may be repositioned in future if, for example, access becomes difficult. 10.2.3 Frequency & timing Chew card monitors (of three nights each) will be repeated four times per year (simultaneously with camera trap surveys): February, May, August, and November. The three night monitor is as recommended by Ruffell et al. (2015) for monitoring both rats and possums, and also matches the best practice monitoring for possums (National Pest Control Agencies, 2015). Saturation of chew cards (when pest densities are too high and bite marks from some species may obscure marks from other species) is not expected to be an issue at this site because of the thresholds for additional control ensuring that pest numbers are maintained at low densities. An additional monitor using chew cards may also be required if the threshold values of rats or possums are exceeded, as per the values given in Table 5 (Section 12.2). The follow-up monitor should occur 4 weeks after the additional control measures to ensure the abundance of the target species has been successfully reduced to acceptable levels. Additional monitoring before and after toxic control operations is standard practice to assess the efficacy of control. These monitors may replace one of the four yearly monitors if timing coincides, enabling effort and resources to be focussed on control operations. 10.2.4 Chew card deployment On each monitoring instance: • Deploy cards for three nights when a mostly fine forecast is expected (no heavy rain predicted), as per the standard methodology for calculating the CCI. • Fill the internal channels of the corflute material with peanut butter as a lure. Alternatively, cards pre-filled with herbal peanut lure can be used (available from Connovation Ltd). • Nail each card to the closest suitable tree trunk 30 cm above the ground using 50 mm flat head nails angled upwards at 30 degrees. • Label cards in permanent marker with the location, line number, card number, date of deployment and date of retrieval. • Retrieve chew cards after the seven-night period, then proceed to interpretation and analysis of bite marks.
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