\u201cI was just throwing everything down to try to get my camera out.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey are an indicator species, which means that they only show up when the wetland is in good health, so it\u2019s such a great example of the work that\u2019s been done here.\u201d<\/p>\n
For the past decade, Shotover Primary School students have helped other groups bring the wetland back to life.<\/p>\n
Audrey Austin, who has moved on to Wakatipu High School, remains a keen birder and regular visitor.<\/p>\n
\u201cI go down there, and I look at all the thriving plants and animals that are down there that call it their home now,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n
\u201cAll the plants that we\u2019ve planted … it\u2019s amazing to see the difference.\u201d<\/p>\n
She has also spotted black-fronted terns, white-faced herons, grey teal, native bees, skinks and dragonflies, as well as the pair of marsh crakes.<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter so long restoring this wetland \u2013 all these thousands of plants now that have been put in the ground, and water-quality testing that we\u2019ve done and invertebrate monitoring that we\u2019ve done, and bird watching \u2013 to see that marsh crakes have come back, that\u2019s amazing. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s incredible.\u201d<\/p>\n
Harding-Shaw said pest traps had picked up mice, rats and the occasional hedgehog, but the scale of the cat presence only became apparent through the trail cameras.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe left them out for 21 nights, and there were 44 triggers for cats over that time, which is huge, which is massive, compared to all other camera monitoring around.\u201d<\/p>\n
Most of them appeared to be pets, she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cFancy breeds, longhairs, ragdolls with collars \u2013 you could tell they were pet cats. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s in the middle of the night, so they\u2019re only here for one thing: if they\u2019re here in the middle of the night, that\u2019s to go hunting, which is a real shame.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of them was actually carrying a dead bird in its mouth at the time.\u201d<\/p>\n
Queenstown cat owners needed to keep them inside at night, she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cEven just having them wandering through the wetland is going to be scaring the birds that we want to be nesting here.\u201d<\/p>\n
Whakatipu Wildlife Trust executive officer Anna Harding-Shaw. Photo \/ RNZ, Katie Todd<\/p>\n
Austin was worried the marsh crakes were only just settling in and could be particularly vulnerable.<\/p>\n
\u201cLike many New Zealand birds, they\u2019ve evolved to combat avian predation from the sky, so marsh crake are perfectly camouflaged and when they feel threatened, they\u2019ll run and hide,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s great if you have, say, a falcon or harrier above you, but when the threat is coming from a land-based predator that operates by smell, they\u2019re basically left very, very vulnerable.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can imagine this 15cm-long bird trying to attack a cat. <\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s not going to go down well for the bird, probably.\u201d<\/p>\n
Harding-Shaw said feral cats were already a major challenge for the region.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn terms of feral cats, there\u2019s thousands of them in the hills, absolutely thousands, and they roam everywhere across the Southern Alps. <\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re in all ecosystems, really hardy, really smart, adaptable and can live on nearly anything, a huge problem to get on top of.\u201d<\/p>\n
Feral cats were recently added to Predator Free 2050s hitlist, which could unlock more funding for projects that target them.<\/p>\n
However, pet cats roaming near towns could complicate trapping efforts, Harding-Shaw said.<\/p>\n
Whakatipu Wildlife Trust asked Queenstown Lakes District Council to make microchipping and desexing mandatory, partly because some feral cat traps switched off if they detected a microchipped pet cat.<\/p>\n
It also wanted the council to consider an education campaign about keeping cats inside at night.<\/p>\n
Queenstown Lakes District Council responded that it would investigate cat management as part of its Climate and Biodiversity Plan 2025-28.<\/p>\n
Shotover Primary School teacher Emma Watts hoped local cat owners would start keeping their felines indoors before any chicks hatched.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt feels like you\u2019re facing a losing battle,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe have paradise ducks down there that are having ducklings, and we\u2019re hoping that the marsh crake is going to breed down there.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve got p\u016bkeko we hope will breed down there as well, and you just think what chance are they going to have, if there are lots of cats there?<\/p>\n
\u201cWe love cats, we love animals … but we would love to educate our community for their domesticated cats to be kept in at night.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2013 RNZ<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cI was just throwing everything down to try to get my camera out. \u201cThey are an indicator species,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":229547,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[19699,78,22504,126,111,139,69,52589,20930,111298,147,1555,61,22505,73915,406],"class_list":["post-229546","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-cats","tag-in","tag-katie","tag-native","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-pose","tag-queenstown","tag-roaming","tag-science","tag-threat","tag-to","tag-todd","tag-wetland","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229546","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=229546"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229546\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/229547"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=229546"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=229546"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=229546"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}