We are fortunate in New Zealand to have a truly unique natural environment. Let’s present our golf courses as a proudly Kiwi experience and more than just golf. Let our golfers and community experience New Zealand nature at its glorious best!

We advocate for the removal of pest plants, animals and insects from our golf courses and encourage the rehabilitation of our natural ecosystems. You can start by joining in on the government and DOC’s plan to become Pest Free by 2050 (PF 2050). Let’s get rid of the Rats, Possums, Stoats, Ferrets and Rabbits amongst others from our golf courses.

Here are some useful tips and resources to help you with this:

Best Practice Methodology:

• Landcare Research Vertebrate Pest Control site: https://www.landcareresearch.co.nz/resources/pests/vertebrate-pest-decision-support-system

• Predator Free NZ website www.predatorfreenz.org

• NPCA website www.npca.org.nz - In future this material will be hosted by MPI led Bionet toolkit

• Predator Free 2050 DOC Toolkit https://www.doc.govt.nz/nature/pests-and-threats/predator-free-2050/toolkit-predator-free-2050/

Online Trap Data Management Sites:

These providers have developed online data capture tools in NZ for managing and analysing your trap data, including interactive maps and graphs:

• Trap.NZ (Groundtruth Ltd/WWF NZ) – also an app - https://www.trap.nz/

• CatchIT (Auckland University) - https://www.stat.auckland.ac.nz/~fewster/CatchIT/

• Walk the Line (Department of Conservation) - primarily an app – Distribution of this app is a work in process. You get the best summary/instruction from the Predator Free NZ website - https://predatorfreenz.org/tools-resources/online-data-collection/

• Pest Mapper (MAIN Trust) – also an app - http://www.main.net.nz/index.php?page=pestmapper

This tool does have a cost attached, but it also offers customisation

Funding:

• DOC Community Fund – https://www.doc.govt.nz/get-involved/funding/doc-community-fund/

• The Predator Free NZ Trust website has useful links to other sources of funding: https://predatorfreenz.org/tools-resources/funding-support/

• Other funding sources (this is a great link with heaps of funding options): https://www.doc.govt.nz/get-involved/funding/other-funding-organisations/

Did you know?

It is a well known fact that Trees form a big part of sequestering carbon from the atmosphere. Did you know that grass is very competitive and is sometimes better at sequestering carbon than trees as grass can ‘fix’ more Carbon into the soil than Trees. Here is an interesting article: https://phys.org/news/2018-07-grasslands-reliable-carbon-trees.html

Check out this link to the Billion Tree Project/Fund for your Tree planting project: https://www.teururakau.govt.nz/funding-and-programmes/forestry/planting-one-billion-trees/one-billion-tree-fund/

We will also be updating and posting for information and resources for projects such as Habitat Restoration and Tree planting in the near future as soon as they become available, Watch this space…!

For more help or information please contact your local DOC Ranger or your local Superintendents Association.