Imagine this tiny bird, the mōhua, as a real forest celebrity! It's like the VIP of the South Island and Stewart Island forests, but sadly, it's been facing some tough times lately. Due to habitat loss and some pesky predators like stoats and rats, its numbers have dwindled to just 5,000–20,000 individuals.

But fear not! In swoops the Forest and Bird's Central Otago Lakes branch with their superhero volunteers! These amazing folks have been on a 25-year mission to save the mōhua population at Makarora in Mt Aspiring National Park. They've got a whole trap setup with over 1,300 traps and a squad of 50+ volunteers, all backed up by the awesome Southern Lakes Sanctuary.

In 2017, the Makarora trapping project received an ORC ECO Fund grant for 120 traps and further ECO Fund grants in 2019 and 2022 went into cat trapping projects in the Makarora and Matukituki valleys.

In 2023, they received another ECO Fund grant for 300 ‘Monster’ rat traps. These replaced ancient and failing traps, and boosted trap numbers in particularly ratty places. This grant was timely, as late in 2023 there was a rat plague.

Since deploying Monster traps, there has been a significant increase in the number of rats caught.

Mōhua populations in the area appear to have survived and, overall, this long-running programme seems to be making a difference — we still have mōhua. However, without the intervention of DOC Tiakina Ngā Manu operations, the population would be decimated.