Great legacy and a new person

Thank you Laura. Laura was a legend working with Purangi Conservation Trust. She set up a huge number of traps with trail cameras across a large land area, in weather that was rain, hail and shine. She believed in what she was doing - in her own words, “We really can make a huge dent in this area and the follow-on effect will be huge.” Laura was speaking about the bird song being heard again, moving freely in all areas of Aotearoa bush land, and she could see a future where that was a reality and that people were engaged in ensuring that kind of environment as sustained.

Welcome Zoe Now Laura has started a new role at Ngati Hei. With her departure, the Trust received many qualified applicants to continue the work of installing and servicing pest control traps and bait stations on the Backdrop Trust QE2 block.

After much consideration, The Trust contracted Zoe Neureuter, to commence work in the area. Zoe has been a volunteer, regularly servicing trap lines in the Shakespeare Cliff Scenic and Historic Reserve. With her high level of fitness, strong conservation ethic as trustee of The Noises Charitable Trust, Zoe will be a great asset to continue the good work following in Laura’s footsteps, She has made an excellent start in October.

Support for Community groups Predator Free Hauraki Coromandel Trust (PFHC) reached out to Purangi Conservation Trust last month to offer support. The field support team offer help to community groups with track cutting and marking, general maintenance of pest control areas, checking traps, establishing new track lines, trap distribution, GPS marking, monitoring and more. Over three days, Aaron, Renee and Jamie assisted with their skills and hard work to make great progress with pest control and future planning. The Trust is very grateful for their help It was a big week, with much achieved and appreciated in the way of hands on help and expertise. Part of the three days of assistance included testing traps and trap maintenance, clearing hakea from fence lines, plus taking 18 x DOC 200 boxes with traps up the river via boat and installing them into TRAPNZ project locations. Adam Clow assisted a great deal in making available the use of his boat to get the team and traps up the river. Photos : Zoe Neureuter, newly employed by the Backdrop