Puketotara Landcare Group was formed in 2011 by local landowners and Northland Regional Council. This cache is a tribute to all the hard work put into this wonderful area and to highlight some of the fantastic progress being made for the environment in this community.
The group covers an area of 2000 hectares but is expanding to link with other groups to provide landscape scale predator control in the Bay of Islands area. The group focusses on kiwi and other native species; protection through predator control of possums, stoats, weasels, feral cats, rats, mice, hedgehogs, wild pigs, magpies and mynas.
It is not commonly known that there are less than 5-6 thousand kiwi left in Northland. If it were not for the more than 60 landcare groups operating in Northland, kiwi may well be extinct on the mainland. There are an estimated 50-100 kiwi in the Puketotata area and this number is increasing with the removal of pests.
Dog control is critical to the survival of adult kiwi and the group hold scheduled dog kiwi aversion training days to encourage responsible dog ownership and behaviour- any dog is capable of killing kiwi.
Puketotara Landcare group also plant native trees and encourage landowners to fence off waterways.
The cache is a camo'd paint bucket and requires minimal bush bashing. Park sensibly on the cache side of the road. When placed it contained brochures, stickers, a drink cooler, coasters, mini flax bag, kiwi badge, 2x kiwi key rings, gloves, a pencil and logbook with pen attached.