A Prickly Question!

We’ve been hearing from our trapping community that hedgehogs are being caught just as often as rats. Is that a problem?

Many of us grew up with hedgehogs as the cute heroes of children’s books - but in New Zealand they are a classified pest, and they have a serious impact on our native wildlife.

Hedgehogs eat the eggs and chicks of ground-nesting birds. Right now, when the few remaining pūteketeke around Lake Dunstan are nesting close to the water’s edge, hedgehogs can be just as damaging as rats, stoats and ferrets.

They also have a huge appetite for invertebrates. That harms native insect populations, and it also puts pressure on our native insect-eating species, who suddenly find their food supply shrinking.

Through the colder months, hedgehogs also prey on geckos and skinks. Because these reptiles slow down in the cold, they are easy targets. One of the species at risk locally is our Woodworthia Cromwell  - also called the Kawarau gecko - which is classified “At Risk” and needs our protection.

So if your bait boards and tracking tunnels are showing both rats and hedgehogs — and your traps are catching both — that’s a win for biodiversity.

Happy trapping!

If you’d like to learn more about the Cromwell district  eRATication programme, join a training session, borrow from our Community Trap Library or get involved in the very worthwhile Growing Kaitiakitanga initiative, send the project team a message on Facebook — Predator Free Cromwell, Contact Us through this website, or email the team at predatorfreecromwell@gmail.com