Refining Stoat Traps - Airport Deployment

The start of the new year has brough a further revision of the set up deployment part of the project targetting stoats, and in particular our deployment in conjunction with the New Plymouth Airport.  We have recently spent time there upgrading the solar panels and giving the units a refresh.   They were initially deployed in June and were working consistently towards the end of September.    We have been monitoring their progress since then and have been looking for an opportunity to revise the units.

Previously we have been working off a sound activation cycle of every five minutes which has reflected the battery and in particular the solar panel units that we were charging (there will be post shortly on the specifics of what we are using and their price point essentially we were using $8.00 (NZ$) panels and have now upgraded to $25.00 (NZ$) units.    We have maintained a night cycle with the unit but the focus is very much on stoats.

The sound lure unit has been placed inside a DOC200 unit which has been baited with salted rabbit meat.    The solar panel as shown in the picture has been duct taped in place on the roof of the unit.    We have a static distressed rabbit track playing at thirty second intervals (subject to the availability of the battery strength, the computer has been coded to activate if it has the available battery strength, if not it will activate less frequently).   We are aware that there are stoats in the area based on visual sightings in the past few weeks.  

We believe that the use of a DOC200 will prevent an animal (specifically brush tailed possums) from attempting to move the unit or set it off, and we are hoping that a Stoat will access the trap in the near future.

If this is successful then we will upgrade all of our Airport units to the DOC200 as described.   We would also like to take this opportunity to thank the New Plymouth Airport for their assistance with this project.