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Creating a “predator free” peninsular

Date

30 September 2020


Predator Free Wellington (PFW) is New Zealand’s biggest urban predator eradication project. Their aim is to completely eradicate rats, possums, and mustelids from Wellington’s Miramar Peninsula - an area of 30,000 hectares where 212,000 people live.

PFW is undertaking a staged eradication across five phases over 10 years. The first phase started on 1,000 hectares in 2019 and is in the final stages of completion, with the last few pockets of rats being removed, and moving into a biosecurity phase.

A finalist in the 2020 New Zealand Biosecurity Awards, the project has involved getting 3,000 permissions from residents, landowners and businesses to house a device on their property. Around 7,000 bait stations and traps and 16,000 monitoring devices were deployed across the peninsula during the project.

Explore the latest project updates on the Predator Free Wellington website. 

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