Crunching the numbers for 2024
2024 has been a milestone year for City Sanctuary with the 5,000th possum and 5,000th rat officially removed from Dunedin.
We presently have 3,463 possum, rat and mustelid traps across City Sanctuary’s operating area; 1,698 in residential backyards and 1,765 in city reserves.
City Sanctuary traps across Dunedin City reserves and residential backyards
Over the past year, backyard trappers, volunteers and staff have undertaken a whopping 39,739 trap checks and have removed a total of 4,183 predators from our urban landscape. Since City Sanctuary began in 2020, 16,706 predators have been removed.
City Sanctuary trap checks for 2024
City Sanctuary trap catches for 2024
Our volunteers and backyard trappers are the backbone of the City Sanctuary project. As a small team, we couldn’t have made these achievements without the time, energy and commitment from our volunteers. Over the past year, volunteers have contributed 19,771 hours to checking traps and helping with other tasks, which works out to be the equivalent of 2,471 workdays or 9 full-time employees!
Volunteer hours for 2024.
Over the past few years, we have undertaken annual possum monitoring across the city to gather a relative abundance index across our operating area. The data from the monitoring lines is not an actual measure of how many possums there are, but rather provides a rough estimate of density.
City Sanctuary operating area.
Our most recent monitor in August 2024 showed that there has been a substantial decrease in possum numbers in our high priority areas, and an overall reduction in possum abundance across the city. However, there’s still a lot of work to be done to get our detections below 3% RTCI (residual trap catch index). This is the level where we know it leads to positive impacts on native biodiversity.
Residual Trap Catch Index (RTCI) by Management units 2022-2024.