Monitoring the impact of 1080 and the reinvasion rate
Predator Free Whangārei have been using DOC AI Cams to monitor the birds and pests in a block of bush near Kauri Mountain for the last year. These cameras were purchased by the Northland Regional Council (NRC).
Check out this video of Zac from the NRC setting up a camera.
The cameras regularly detected possums, rodents, and kiwi and occasionally detected cats, hedgehogs and mustelids. The cameras were mostly left in the same place with the batteries being changed every month or two. Compared to other monitoring methods this is low effort, with high quality instantaneous monitoring from the connected cameras.
NRC undertook a 1080 pulse over the area at the end of June. The monitoring continued after the treatment. The possum numbers dropped to zero and the rodent numbers to low levels. But as you can see in the chart below, there were a handful of possums detected after about three months. Presumably this in a reinvasion. The rodent numbers are also starting to increase slowly.
This chart of possum and rodent visits shows impact of 1080 and the gradual increase in pests in the following months. The chart was created by exporting the visits data from the Cacophony Portal into a spreadsheet.
The cameras have also been configured to do audio recordings. A quick analysis of these over the last 3 months (this is since the number of birds which are recognised by the camera has been expanded to over 60) shows the following.
The birds detected near Kauri Mountain August-November 2025. Note, this is a logarithmic scale
It will be interesting to reprocess the earlier recordings to see if there are any changes since the 1080 pulse. The real benefit of this monitoring will over the scale of years to see long term trends. Here's an example of this in longer term bird monitoring in Akaroa.
All up there were over 28,000 audio and thermal recordings. This data provides a useful illustration of the impact of a 1080 pulse and the rate of recovery of the targeted pests. The DOC AI Cam provides a low cost way to get granular, real-time monitoring data to accurately measure the outcomes.