Sound Lure Project in the Media - Wrapping Up 2021

 We have been featured recently indirectly in a two seperate articles and locations.   The first was indirectly when during an article on the students program What Now! one of the students who was featured was shown a range of equipment that was used in possum control and one of those items was one of the projects sound lures was demonstrated to the student.   The link here is to the Facebook link of the news article.

The second appearance was as part of the 123 Tech National Finals - the students from Auroa Primary School were the winners of this competition last year (see this link for the competition) and we were also spoken to for this years competition - the link to that is here.

While we did not enter the competition with our students this year we wanted to take the opportunity to congratulate all of this years winners on their achievements.

Finally we are continuing to work on our sound lure project and focussed on the distress lure. brush tailed possum combination.   This has taken somewhat of a back seat due to other commitments at present we are however continuing to monitor and test and look forward to making some announcements shortly as we look to close the project up.

This brush tailed possum was photographed last night interacting with the lure.

123 Tech National Champions

 Today Auroa Primary Schools 123 Tech Competition Team, the Auroa Primary School Power Rangers were awarded first place in the 123 Tech National Competition in the Y5-8 Catergory.   This is a huge achievement for the students of the school to win such an important competition with the Sound Lure Project.   Today the awards was broadcast online and you can watch the awards.   Digital Dan from 123 Tech was secretly hiding at Auroa Primary School and revealed the students as the national champions at the 50:00 mark.    The students received a national award, $1500 for the School and $375 each.

Tahi Rua Toru Tech Competition - National Finalists

At the end of last week we received notification that we had received a wildcard entry into the Tahi Rua Toru (123 Tech) National Finals.  This is a significant achievement for our studnets who are a team of Year 5/Six Students who have been selected as national finalists in a Y5-8 Competition.   We are thrilled with this recognition of the students and the hard work that they have been making throughout the year on their project.   They have the opportunity to present via Zoom to a panel of experts on their project this week and results will be announced next week.

We have finalised our speakers for the unit and made futher developments at looking at powering of the units.    We also have an issue to address that has been evident from recent photographs that have been recorded on our trail cameras - that is we can clearly see that Brush Tailed Possums are targetting the units and interacting with them.    Clearly in the series of photos that are shown on the left the brush tailed possum can be seen ignoring the traps that are baited with peanut butter and fruit (apple) and instead interacts directly with the sound lure.  This is not an isolated incident - at the same location there is an almost identical series of interactions and images a week later from a second possum, that spends time at the location and interacts specificall with the lure.   

We are currently still contemplating out options but one certain possibility is placing the sound lure in conjunction with another form of trap, such as a live capture trap, which the possum would have to enter the cage to interact with the sound lure and trigger a footplate.     

In the latest series of images and data gathering from our location we have again a contrast between the sound lure location and the non- sould lure location.    During the past seven days we have had a single activation at the non sound lure site.  At the sound lure site there has been in comparison some significant activity - twenty one activations with six possums at the site.   

Furthermore two of the possums have clearly directly been in contact with the sound lure, pulling at the wires and knocking the solar panel off its placement location - which has raised a question as to how long the unit has been activating as a result.    

These results continue to be promising at this location - we have had variations of the unit in place since early September and there is a clear pattern developing.  

At the non sound lure location we now have a cumulative total of thirty pest identifcations and 121 acivations.  As a ratio to activations/deployment of 0.49 activations per day of pest animals and 0.50 over the timeframe (essentially we expect at this site to have an activation and a pest every second day on average [over sixty days at present].

At the sound lure location we have a sixty one pest identifications and 204 activations.  As a ratio to activations/deployment of 3.13 activations per day of pest animals have been visible 0.93 times a day.

However it needs to be noted that we have changed the deployment several times since we started - including putting a sound lure externally on the trap box to increase the volume.  When that is considered the activations/deployment increases to 3.56 activations per day and 1.35 times a day. 

We continue to remind oursleves that while these figures are extremely pleasing they are extremely early in our research and data collection.

Sound Lures Around New Zealand: Thank You to Fonterra

 Last year in preparation for the 123 Tech Challenge that students from Auroa Primary School entered into, winning the Taranaki/Whanganui Competition (a Y7/8 competition when the team was made up of three Y6 students and one Y5 students!) the team went to Fonterra in Kapuni and made a presentation to the workers at the facility.

Fonterra gifted the students the funds to purchase ten units which were used for testing purposes and these ten units have formed the foundation of the stoat aspect of the project which is receiving national attention.

• Three of these units are in constant use at New Plymouth Airport, running testing on weather tightness, solar power and basic baiting.   These units have been deployed for just over a month and have resulted in the capture of a Stoat and numerous mice.
• One unit has been deployed to the McKenzine Country, the South Island in a trap line inside a DOC 250.
• Two units are currently enroute to the West Coast, to be deployed as part of a Stoat operation that is about to take place in Whataroa, South Island
• Two units are about to be given to the Department of Conservation for deployment as part of the efforts on the Mountain in Taranaki with the local stoat network.
• Two units are going to Lake Rotokare Trust to support thier local efforts to control Mustelids.

The students from Room One have been responsible for putting together the sound profile for these units, putting the units together and will soon begin to manufacture a new group of units.    We would again like to thank Fonterra for the support with this project. 

We would also like to once again acknowledge the invaluable support of Venture Taranaki, Curious Minds Taranaki and Andrew Hornblow from Opunake.

This is a creative, innovative project for our students to be involved in combining reseach, design, coding and allow them to apply these skills towards a local problem that will upskill them for the future.