No traces of rats found in part of Raukūmara Forest where population of kiwi live

A big conservation project on the East Cape is thrilled to discover no traces of rats in a large block of the Raukūmara Range where a small population of kiwi live.

150,000 hectares of the forest has been poisoned with 1080 as part of a project to save the forest, and the creatures living in it, from pests.

The national park stretches across 250,000ha of the rugged East Cape and is the largest continuous native forest remaining in the North Island.

But the Raukūmara Pae Maunga Restoration Project said after generations of neglect, the health of the forest is suffering with trees dying, canopy collapsing and birdsong scarce.

In 2020, Raukūmara Pae Maunga Restoration Project - a partnership between Ngāti Porou, Te-Whānau-ā-Apanui and the Department of Conservation Te Papa Atawhai - received $34.4 million in government funding as part of the Jobs for Nature scheme.

Trustee Ora Barlow told RNZ they've built the only integrated large scale operation of its kind in the country, with 110,000ha of deer and goat culling, and 150,000ha of aerial 1080.

"Our people have a deep relationship with the whenua, and the awa, and the ngahere... so when you're talking about putting a toxin into that environment of course people are going to have concerns and questions," she said.

To overcome that, they took locals into the forest to see the damage for themselves.

"The loss of young forest growth, the silence of the forest, the 1000-year-old trees that had fallen down and been eaten from inside out. This is the reality of what we are dealing with in an enormous area of rugged country that you simply can't walk into," Barlow said.

Once people saw the state of the forest, they realised the scale of the issue.

"Everyone agreed we had a problem, and they could see that. At the end of the day 1080 is a great tool - I used to be anti-1080 but now I realise that wasn't based on good information.

"You really have to understand the concerns and take people on a journey about the forest," Barlow said.

In August this year, 1080 was dropped over nearly 50,000ha. The team used tracking tunnels with ink pads to find rats, and to see what was left. It revealed in one area that rat numbers fell from 80 percent before the poison drop, to zero percent afterwards.

Then a trail camera captured a kiwi strutting through the forest.

"It's super exciting... a big booty kiwi! The first time we saw it on the trail cam the screams of joy coming from our team was just fantastic.

"These kiwi have been holding in there. They've been present pre and post 1080, so no - 1080 doesn't kill everything," she said.

Wiremu Wharepapa from Te Kaha has been hunting in the Raukūmara range since he was a boy, living off the land and calling the forest his "garden".

"We got a big problem - I mean the possums were here, they'd move in and the numbers grew. Then the deer moved in - it was like rabbits moving into a lettuce garden," he said.

He became worried about destructive pests in the forest, and felt the forest had been neglected for too long.

"It's most probably one of the last of the Mohican - it's the forgotten ngahere in Aotearoa," he said.

He's proud of the mahi going into restoring the forest, and is grateful to be re-connecting with the Raukumara's.

"We're in and out of the ngahere now, so it's like our backyard - it was always our backyard - and it is our backyard."