28 October 2025
Stewart Island Community Centre, Oban
DOC, in partnership with Zero Invasive Predators (ZIP), mounted an aerial operation to protect endangered pukunui across approximately 40,000 hectares of Rakiura National Park between June and September 2025. The primary objective of the operation was to reduce feral cats, which have driven pukunui to the brink of extinction.
On Tuesday 28 October, DOC and ZIP hosted two community meetings to update the community on some of the results of that operation. We would like to thank everyone who took the time to participate in these sessions.
There were three presenters at each session:
Jennifer Ross, Department of Conservation (DOC) Operations Manager Rakiura
Tristan Rawlence, DOC Science Advisor
Darius Fagan, ZIP Predator Free Rakiura Project Manager
We recognise that many people were not able to join us on the day, so we’ve provided recordings of each presentation below.
Darius Fagan, ZIP Predator Free Rakiura Project Manager
Darius gave a review of the pukunui operation, describing how it was planned and carried out. He also talked about the monitoring networks DOC and ZIP had in place to estimate densities of both target and non-target animals in the operational zone, before and after the operation.
He described the layout of ZIP’s rat eradication and deer repellent trial blocks, and the camera grids in place to monitor results.
Tristan Rawlence, DOC Science Advisor
Tristan took the audience through DOC’s pre- and post-operational monitoring results in detail, covering possum, feral cat and kiwi densities.
His presentation offered graphs and heat maps to help people visualise pest and non-target densities in the operational area, and in an adjacent non-treatment control block.
He also talked about the process of analysing the many thousands of images captured by the trail camera networks, and how they were interpreted.
Jennifer Ross, Department of Conservation (DOC) Operations Manager Rakiura
Jen talked about work DOC’s dotterel team had done to locate pukunui nests and count eggs laid along the Tin Range and elsewhere. She also talked about the ground-based predator control work her team were doing in the pukunui breeding area.
She discussed ongoing monitoring and pest control work out to the pukunui flock count at Awarua in April 2026, which would give a definitive estimate of pukunui numbers.
Darius Fagan, ZIP Predator Free Rakiura Project Manager
Darius returned to talk about next steps in the pukunui operation, and about the future release of ZIP’s rate eradication and deer repellent trial data. He also updated the audience on ZIP’s 1080 saltwater trials, conducted by Nelson’s Cawthron Institute, and about rodent detection dog trials at Bluff Ferry Terminal as part of biosecurity research.
The presentations were followed by a question time, and the transcript is available here: