Pest animals

Am I succeeding?

It is essential that you are monitoring your progress and effectiveness in pest control programmes of any size so that you are not wasting your effort, putting too much/not enough bait out, or not actually achieving control. Predator and food relationships are quite complex and usually you will need to control more than one pest species at once (integrated pest management) to achieve good outcomes. For more information on Integrated Pest management read the pdf below:

There are two different types of monitoring:

Result monitoring

Measures the success of any control measures undertaken on a target pest species. For example rodent monitoring using tracking tunnels gives an indication of presence expressed as a percentage, and is a commonly used technique. To enable successful breeding of native flora and fauna, the required percentage presence for rats is <10% and for protection of endangered species <5%.

We have prepared information on how to carry out result monitoring below:

Outcome monitoring

Measures the effect that your control measures are having on other desirable species present. For example, a bird count or vegetation survey will show the differences in recorded bird numbers or habitat before and after the target pest species has been controlled to an acceptably low level. It is important to gather this data before and during your programme so that you can track results and to confirm that the control being undertaken on the pest species is actually making a difference to your desired species or ecosystem.

All types of monitoring will be more meaningful if ‘control' sites of similar habitat from outside of your pest management area are monitored too. If kereru numbers inside your area are increasing you need to know what is happening in surrounding areas too - it might not be directly related to your pest control after all! Similarly, you'll need to measure abundances both before, during and after pest control to know whether your control made any difference to overall population levels.

We have prepared information on how to carry out outcome monitoring below: