Cat prop may save black stilt

Black stilt - Himantopus novaezelandiae (Wikimedia Commons)

SAHIBAN KANWAL

11/09/2014

 

A life-like animated "cat" could be the key to saving endangered black stilts.

The Department of Conservation (DOC) is working with Otago University and an animatronics company to create a "cat" the birds will be terrified of - hopefully saving them from the jaws of the Mackenzie Country's feral felines.

Kaki Recovery programme ranger Cody Thyne said the university had agreed to participate if funding was provided. The project is expected to cost between $20,000 and $30,000 and a financial partner is being sought. "The decision to seek out a specialist company with significant expertise in creating life-like animated props was based on the need to provide stimuli to black stilts that is as authentic as possible and does not pose any real harm to the birds. "The cost includes designing, building and testing a working model. It also includes travel."

The birds will be provided with a realistic "negative experience" in a captive setting that conditions them to avoid feral cats and other predators in the wild. The project will potentially have benefits for endangered species not just in New Zealand but globally, Thyne said.  Work on the animated model is likely to take place between February and July and it should be ready for use by August when the sub-adult black stilts are released into the wild.

Feral cats pose a major threat to black stilts and this month DOC caught more than 120 wild cats in two mass openings of predator traps in the Mackenzie Country. The numbers caught were about 40 per cent of the annual cat kill in the area and conservation services manager Dean Nelson said it boded well for the beginning of the breeding season and for the black stilt release.

The predator traps have been used for more than 10 years but the numbers have not changed. "We have managed to knock ferrets down, but feral cats are very territorial. If one leaves an area, others take over. What we are trying to do is to get the numbers low enough so they do not represent a threat," Nelson said.

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