Predator Free Wellington faces $1.75m annual shortfall

Predator Free Wellington is facing a shortfall of $1.75 million annually, largely due to a decrease in government funding from next year.

The group has successfully eradicated rats from the Miramar peninsula and turned its attention toward the central city, hopeful it can persevere.

On Wednesday, the team showed National Party MP Catherine Wedd, who chairs Parliament's environment committee, and the media around its Wilton-based workshop.

Operational field support officer Craig Keen said they were always chasing that last 1 percent of rats.

"There's the easy ones that you can get, and then it's the hard ones at the very end," he said.

"There's all these different tricks, and over time, it's been developed - we've borrowed from other places, but we've also developed some of our own things."

Scattered on benchtops around the workshop were chew cards infused with Fix and Fogg peanut butter, and Best Foods mayo - a delicious treat for rats, ferrets, stoats and weasels.

"Things that we use the most, that is, the most effective kill - poison."

Brodifacoum was placed in lockable plastic boxes, in the form of chunks on kebab sticks meant to be nibbled, or pellets, which the rat could take back to its burrow and "eat at its own leisure".

There were chew sticks infused with bio markers, to track rats to their favourite spots, and Goodnature traps, which automatically reset after each kill, making hard-to-reach places easier to service.

Project director James Willcocks said after success in Miramar, phase two, which was currently underway, expanded the trapping area west across the city, from the CBD down to Island Bay.

"With Miramar being the first phase of our project, that was all around proof-of-concept, and trying to figure out how to do this stuff for the very first time, because it's never been done anywhere in the world before," he said.

"Now that we've made that recipe, our role is to refine that, so we need to harder, we need to go faster, and therefore more cheaply."

Ninety percent of the organisation's budget went towards field operations - with more than 11,000 bait stations and traps deployed, the team had conducted 74,000 trap checks and 91,000 bait station checks in the past year.

There were 140,000 chew cards monitored, two rat detector dogs Kimi and Rapu, and their handler Sally, and 520 cameras in the field producing 389,536 images.

But from next year, the organisation faced a shortfall in funding.

Its work programme cost $4m a year, dropping to $3m in 2028, as it became more efficient.

In previous years, the government had provided funding through the Crown-owned company Predator Free 2050 of $2m annually - but come the 2025/2026 financial year, that would drop to $500,000 a year.

Rob Forlong, chief executive of Predator Free 2050 Limited, said the situation was not unique.

"With the conclusion of the Jobs for Nature and Provincial Growth Fund programmes, PF2050 Limited's funding pool has reduced by approximately two-thirds. This means that six projects, including Predator Free Wellington, continue to be funded, albeit at a lower level than previously."

Funding would conclude for the remaining 10 projects PF2050 had partnered with, and to minimise the impact, it had been working with the affected projects and a professional fundraiser to help them raise money from other sources.

Funding for Predator Free Wellington also came from the city and regional councils, the NEXT Foundation - which was also winding up - plus other smaller other grants and revenue.

Willcocks said: "We're fine for this financial year, and then into next year and ongoing, we're facing a deficit of $1.75 million annually - and that's at our current rate of spend."

"Obviously we've got that plan to expand into larger areas, and keep the momentum up."

The government, through the Department of Conservation, released discussion documents this week to garner public feedback on a number of questions, including the future of Predator Free 2050.

One of the draft 2030 goals was to eradicate rats, mustelids and possums from one major city - and Wellington was well on its way.

Another topic for discussion was whether to add mice, hedgehogs and feral cats to the list of target species - which Willcocks pointed out would require more tools, and more money.

Catherine Wedd told RNZ it was amazing to see the knowledge and data Predator Free Wellington could share with the rest of the country, and the government was committed to a predator free future.

"That's the outcome that we want to achieve, and of course we're committed to protecting our environment and our biodiversity."

But she would not be drawn on whether any more funding was on the cards.

Conservation Minister Tama Potaka told RNZ earlier this week: "We need to ensure that the good work that's taken place over the last few years, for example Predator Free, and some of the Jobs for Nature projects and others, is continued and we don't lose ground."

New funding was something "that would be deliberated on over successive budgets".

Feedback on the discussion documents would be taken into account.

Department of Conservation deputy director-general for public affairs Sia Aston said Jobs for Nature had always been time limited.

"Predator Free 2050 is critical to addressing the threat of introduced predators to our unique nature, and Predator Free Wellington has achieved amazing conservation outcomes for the region."

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