Our vision for a rat free capital city
We’re making Wellington the world’s first predator free capital city, a place where our native species and communities can thrive.
This ambitious project involves the commitment of thousands – households, community groups and organisations – all working together to remove every single rat, possum, stoat and weasel from the entire Wellington area.
Our project is special because it moves beyond typical conservation with fences and offshore islands. Our work will see our precious native taonga living among a city where 212,000 people live, work and play, every day.
Why are we running this world-first project?
A kākāriki spotted on Miramar Peninsula for the first time in living memory.Aotearoa New Zealand is a biodiversity hotspot with 80,000 endemic species but it also has the highest proportion of threatened wildlife. An estimated 68,000 native birds are killed by introduced predators every night. For 85 million years our geographical isolation made our native species unique yet vulnerable. The arrival of rats, stoats, and possums has pushed our taonga to the brink of extinction. By removing these predators we give our manu (birds), invertebrates (like wētā), and lizards a fighting chance to survive.
In 2016, the Predator Free 2050 project was launched to ‘protect our native species, improve biodiversity, create greater ecological resilience and restore unique ecosystems’. Our project is working to solve the urban piece of the puzzle.
In the 1980s only 10 pairs of tūī and kererū remained in Wellington. Fast forward to today and the predator free movement is making a phenomenal difference. Wellington is bucking global trends and rewilding in front of our eyes with tūī, kākā and kererū now a daily sight for our tamariki! As well as significant ecological outcomes, we’re turning the tide on the sunk costs associated with long term predator control methods. Plus we’re creating positive social impacts by involving everyone, increasing wellbeing and building communities.
Our plan to make Wellington predator free
Our project covers 30,000 ha and around 70,000 households, stretching from Miramar Peninsula to the south-west corner of Mākara and along the SH1 motorway to the Porirua border.
Across this area there are 58 community trapping groups – that’s one for every suburb in Wellington and most of the reserves in between. Some of these volunteer groups were active long before our organisation began. We are already seeing a rewilding thanks to the ongoing efforts of trappers and the spill-over from Zealandia Te Māra a Tāne.
Our project gains permissions from households, businesses and landowners to create an intensive network that removes rats. We are working through five phases:
- Miramar Peninsula (Phase 1): Phase 1 is complete! We started here as it’s been possum free since 2006 and as a peninsula it’s easier to defend against returning rats and stoats.
- Island Bay to CBD (Phase 2): Our current phase includes sections of the Wellington town belt, CBD and suburbia. We are installing and checking traps and bait stations suburb-by-suburb. Residents in Phase 2, you can sign up now!
- Phases 3, 4 and 5: These phases involve the central city and more rural terrain, with a mix of farmland, wind farms and regenerating forest. In these phases we will work closely with our friends at Capital Kiwi and coordinate with Porirua City’s control efforts as we near the upper border.
Check out our FAQs for more info about our project.
The boundaries for the five phases of our project