[Music]
g'day my name's richard alley i'm a
senior biosecurity officer with hunter
local land services up in the upper
hunter and today we are going to talk
about removing and controlling animals
in a periurban environment all your
little two five and ten acre blocks that
are close to town in built up areas
we're going to talk about cage trapping
the use of cage traps as a humane and
effective way of controlling certain
species
where other methods can't be used like
baiting
and other forms of trapping etc so we're
here with a local land owner that lives
on the outskirts of town that's been
hearing foxes for a long time and has
actually had some chickens get attacked
in the last few days so we're going to
go and see if we can help him here in
the upper hunter
we have virtually two of our main pest
species that we deal with in an urban
situation
one is the rabbit and two foxes
we have a little a cage trap it's people
know it as the cat or possum type cage
trap and they're very effective on
rabbits it's a treadle type
um set and you put the bait or the bait
material in the back here
and shut this carrots are really good
and effective to attract rabbits and
also loosen and lettuce and other green
material and as simple as that you can
catch rabbits in this it's very
effective
also when you move up to foxes we've got
two types of traps that are available
that you will see around
and
they're a lot bigger for the foxes and
one is a simple
book type cage trap where you put the
meat material or chicken or whatever you
may use this runs on just setting coming
in and grabbing the hook and setting it
up
and then you've got a larger version of
that rabbit trap
and it's just a treadle trap as well
which relies on the animal setting on
standing on this pan or plate at the
back
when you're dealing with foxes in an
urban area
you've got your young foxes that are a
bit easier to catch
and you've got old foxes which are very
hard now you're dealing with a cage trap
they're very cunning so we've got to
blend this into the environment as much
as we can we've got to blend it in
there's a chook pen and there's a fence
here so they're two really good
locations to use okay so we'll make sure
it's
fit really tight up against the chuck
pin first nice and level so that door
comes down
just keep checking the door that's going
to come down
neat and uniform and be trapped the
first
process is to
just cover the wire floor that's on the
base of the trap
and that's to make it
easier for that box to
walk into the trap
so it's virtually just using your the
material that's around and just cover
the base of the trap like so
until all that you have a nice earth
floor
and all that's blended in just watch out
at the end there
of the trap the entrance of the trap and
make sure
that's still closing properly i've just
got a piece of meat here
so put your bait material into the back
and make sure it's not easy to get out
you can wire it or zip tie it in there
i've also got some tuna just some tuna
you can buy from the shopping centre and
the i just drip it around and lure the
fox into the trap just in the entrance
way
crack your tin
and just drip some oil in
just to get that box interested around
the trap
and attracted to that meat and how we
can monitor what's going on is by using
one of these cameras
they're very easy to use and to set up
and we'll go into it more detail at the
point where you are lent the trap
so when you've captured an animal please
give us a ring at local land services
office and we'll come out and help
otherwise you can contact local
veterinarian and they can humanely
euthanase that animal as well
so there's a basic few tips of how to
set a cage trap at your place
these cage traps are available by
ringing your local council or local land
services office and will provide more
detail on how to set them the cameras
and the traps at the point of pickup