Having been involved in conservation in The Catlins for the past 12 years, Janine and Gordon take part in numerous conservation projects such as planting and weed management of the public pull-off at the Catlins lakes - amongst others, both through our tours and also on a voluntary basis. We are members of Forest and Bird, The Moths and Butterflies of New Zealand Trust and Catlins Promotions. We have been involved with the Catlins Bat Project for five years, taking part in surveys to log the number of Long-tailed bats foraging in an 8 km stretch of the north Catlins. This work is also being carried over into our tours to encourage visitors to The Catlins to consider getting involved in citizen science projects to help the environment.
*Pest control: Earthlore maintains a trap line which is checked daily. We trap rats and mice; possums; feral cats; rabbits; ferrets, stoats and weasels as well as tracking and removing approximately 10 wasp nests per year to help protect our native invertebrates.
Rather than list the number of kills, we have estimated the number of birds saved by our pest control.
Googling predation by animals we discovered cats take approximately 60 birds per year; rats take approx.15 birds/eggs per year; stoats/ferrets take approx.12 per year and possums approx.10 birds/eggs per year. Based on these figure we have save 1146 birds from predation at Earthlore in the last 2 years. From the 1st of January until the 1st of May, due to our trapping efforts we have saved a further 705 native birds from predation.
Earthlore’s Carbon offset: Earthlore’s total CO2 emissions per year = 1192.3 kg or 1.1923 tonnes. We have planted in excess of 1500 trees which make Earthlore carbon positive by 347.08 tonnes - so we can offset some or all of our customers travel emissions.