Fieldays with Predator Free 2050

We had the privilege of attending the Fieldays in Mystery Creek earlier this month as guests of Predator Free 2050. They hosted various companies they have funded to develop new technology to help achieve the goal of a predator free Aotearoa.

I really enjoyed spending time with these innovators and finding out about their approach. So I thought I’d share a brief summary of who was on the stand.

NZ Auto traps

They were showcasing the latest version of their self resetting, self baiting AT220 trap. They are having great success with this product and are scaling up manufacturing. As they get more people using it, they continue to refine the product, improving reliability and manufacturability. 

These traps are great at knocking down possum numbers and making trapping more productive because you don’t have to continuously rebait and reset the traps. They get some spectacular results.

Envico Technologies

Envico were showing their Spitfire range of products. These are still being tested and are not available to buy yet. This sprays poison on an animal who ingests it when they groom themselves after leaving the trap. They have developed mechanisms for possums, mustelids and rats and are working on getting NAWAC approval. Each device can deliver 100 lethal doses and can be left unattended for 1 year.

Trap.NZ

An important part of any predator program is to measure your progress. Trap.NZ allows you to do this by providing a free service for recording trap, bait, monitoring and biodiversity data. They have over 5000 projects registering data with them. They are used by organisations of all sizes from DOC down. The Cacophony Project has an integration, allowing you to import the thermal camera data directly into trap.nz

Encounter solutions

Encounter solutions provides wireless sensor networks for monitoring and control in remote landscapes, using their Celium platform. Our customers use them with our traps so they can get notifications when live capture traps are triggered. One of the cool innovations they were showing was a device to disable a live capture trap remotely. This is useful in places like Arthurs Pass when they know it's going to snow they disable the trap to prevent false triggers (caused by the snow settling on the trigger plates) and can arm them again without having to visit the trap.

The Cacophony Project is looking to integrate with their network to send notifications of what has been seen on our onboard AI thermal camera.

 eTrapper

The guys from eTrapper were showing their new Baitsense product. This measures the level of bait in bait stations. This improves the productivity of those that are managing bait stations by significantly reducing the amount of labour required to keep full.

Boffa Miskell/Red Fern Solutions/Critter Solutions.

Boffa Miskell is a consultancy company helping their clients enhance the value and sustainability of our environment. They were selling their Poauku long life lures for rodents and mustelids. These will last up to 3 months and can be used with almost any existing trap.

They were also showcasing their EzyLure and CritterPic products they've developed with Redfern Solutions and are being commercialised by Critter Solutions. EzyLure dispenses fresh lure and can be retrofitted to a wide range of traps and bait stations. CritterPic provides real-time monitoring of small species through image feeds and automatic identification.

The Cacophony Project/ 2040

We were also exhibiting - showing our thermal camera, bird monitor, high interaction rate trap and hazing. Here's the video we used to showcase these products.

It was a pleasure meeting everyone that came and saw us. I'm excited by what we as a group of innovators are working on and encourage you to support all of us by trying our products as they become available and giving us feedback so we can make them more useful.