Keeping your homes rat-free

Hamish Chisholm from Predator Free shares an upcoming opportunity to keep your home rat-free this winter.

As the days start closing in, this is usually the time that pesky rats start looking for a new place to live and causing issues within our homes and backyards.

This year, the Chatham Island Landscape Restoration Group has received funding from Predator Free NZ Trust(external link) and Mitre10 to put rat traps in every backyard on the Chathams.

Throughout New Zealand, backyard trapping efforts are spearheading the drive to remove rats from within our communities.

Now it’s Chatham’s chance to reduce the impacts rats have in our homes and businesses.

This is a community-led project that is focused on the benefits to people as well as the benefits to the environment.

The traps are housed in secure wooden boxes that protect the bait from weather, minimise by-catch and more importantly keep your kids and pets safe!

Have your traps serviced

If you live in Waitangi township or nearby, you can choose to have your traps serviced on a regular basis thanks to a generous offer from the Jobs for Nature Te Ara Manu Project(external link).

These traps could either be serviced by the homeowner, or their team can check these traps on a weekly basis. We can discuss with you a solution that works for your home/business.

The aim is to get traps throughout Waitangi, to reduce rat numbers throughout the township.

We are also going to be running traps in community spaces, and in other areas of private land surrounding town to try and further reduce rats making it into town.

For more information and to sign up for a rat trap in your backyard, please feel free to contact Hamish Chisholm on Facebook, via email: h.t.chisholm@gmail.com or on 022 525 9442.

Find out more about our pest management.