Perseverance and Optimism Win
Category: National. Posted: 17 September 2024
Perseverance and Optimism Wins: Peter Nelson Memorial Trophy for Pomona Island Trust
Quiet perseverance and optimism have won Southland conservation group Pomona Island Trust a prestigious legacy award from the New Zealand Biosecurity Institute.
The group has won the NZBI Peter Nelson Memorial Trophy, for achievement in Vertebrate Pest Management.
The Trust aims to restore and conserve Pomona and Rona Islands on Lake Manapouri, as sanctuaries for native plants and animals.
The award assessors were impressed at how much physical work the group put in, maintaining their trap lines on a regular basis as well as their collection of trap data and its analysis over many years.
The group has an extensive network of traps on the islands which volunteers check regularly as well as servicing traps on the mainland opposite the islands.
The Trust has eradicated possums and deer from Pomona Island, and has reduced mice, stoats and rats to low levels, helping both birdlife and invertebrates. There are now thriving populations of native plants and animals on both islands.
The group use Rona Island as a nursery for young Haast tokoeka, also known as Haast kiwi, to grow them to a size where they can be relocated to unprotected habitat. Rona Island also has ground cover of native orchids because it is deer free.
Trust Chairman John Whitehead said “It’s all about perseverance and optimism.”
“It’s not about catching the last rat; it’s about stopping the next one.
“Putting the traps out is Ok but it’s about persuading them to go into them.
“We were pretty naïve when we first went into it. We did well enough but the challenge is that they won’t come back. We need technology to help finish what we set out to do twenty years ago,” Mr Whitehead said.
“Knowing that you guys [The NZBI] exist is as good as getting the award,” Mr Whitehead added.
The Peter Nelson Memorial Trophy is awarded annually by the NZ Biosecurity Institute to individuals or organisations, for achievement in Vertebrate Pest Management within New Zealand.
Peter Nelson made a huge contribution to establishing professionalism within the field of vertebrate pest management in New Zealand in a career which began in 1967.
The trophy is a carved kokako standing on a limb above the skulls of small predatory mammals - a rat, a possum and a stoat.