A cat has been captured on camera near nesting albatross on the Otago Peninsula.<\/p>\n
The cat appeared on the Department of Conservation’s Northern Royal Albatross camera at Taiaroa Head on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Biodiversity, Heritage and Visitors principle ranger Jim Watts said it was most likely a feral cat.<\/p>\n
Rangers did not see it when they went out to check but Watts said seeing a cat in the reserve was not uncommon and Taiaroa Head was not predator free.<\/p>\n
Thirteen cats have been trapped at Pukekura\/Taiaroa Head since the start of the year.<\/p>\n
“At this time of year, the toroa chicks are all above 6.5kg and the risk is low for these birds,” he said.<\/p>\n
“However, there are many other native species, including tar\u0101punga\/red billed gull, t\u012bt\u012b, koror\u0101\/blue penguin, matapo\/Otago Shag and native skinks, that call Pukekura home which are at a greater risk to cat predation.”<\/p>\n
Cats, stoats, ferrets and rats were being targeted in an extensive predator trapping network on the nature reserve and neighbouring land.<\/p>\n
“It is possible this cat has recently moved into the area, or it is possible that it is trap shy and is not interacting with the traps in place,” Watts said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A cat has been captured on camera near nesting albatross on the Otago Peninsula. The cat appeared on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":539751,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[111,139,69,147,406],"class_list":["post-539750","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539750","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=539750"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539750\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/539751"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=539750"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=539750"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=539750"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}