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By Katie Todd of 

A restored wetland on the edge of Queenstown is drawing rare native wildlife back to an area once dry and barren, but conservationists say roaming pet cats could undo years of community-led work.

Just after a rare and elusive bird species was spotted at the Shotover Wetland, the Whakatipu Wildlife Trust said trail cameras detected 44 cats over three weeks.

Executive officer Anna Harding-Shaw was the first to spot the pair of marsh crakes, which are a native species so notoriously “secretive and cryptic” that their total population numbers are unknown.

“I don’t think I’ve ever been that excited to see a bird before,” she said.

“I was just throwing everything down to try to get my camera out.

“They are an indicator species, which means that they only show up when the wetland is in good health, so it’s such a great example of the work that’s been done here.”

For the past decade, Shotover Primary School students have helped other groups bring the wetland back to life.

Audrey Austin, who has moved on to Wakatipu High School, remains a keen birder and regular visitor.

“I go down there, and I look at all the thriving plants and animals that are down there that call it their home now,” she said.

“All the plants that we’ve planted ... it’s amazing to see the difference.”

She has also spotted black-fronted terns, white-faced herons, grey teal, native bees, skinks and dragonflies, as well as the pair of marsh crakes.

“After so long restoring this wetland – all these thousands of plants now that have been put in the ground, and water-quality testing that we’ve done and invertebrate monitoring that we’ve done, and bird watching – to see that marsh crakes have come back, that’s amazing.

“It’s incredible.”

Harding-Shaw said pest traps had picked up mice, rats and the occasional hedgehog, but the scale of the cat presence only became apparent through the trail cameras.

“We left them out for 21 nights, and there were 44 triggers for cats over that time, which is huge, which is massive, compared to all other camera monitoring around.”

Most of them appeared to be pets, she said.

“Fancy breeds, longhairs, ragdolls with collars – you could tell they were pet cats.

“It’s in the middle of the night, so they’re only here for one thing: if they’re here in the middle of the night, that’s to go hunting, which is a real shame.

“One of them was actually carrying a dead bird in its mouth at the time.”

Queenstown cat owners needed to keep them inside at night, she said.

“Even just having them wandering through the wetland is going to be scaring the birds that we want to be nesting here.”

Whakatipu Wildlife Trust executive officer Anna Harding-Shaw. Photo / RNZ, Katie Todd

Austin was worried the marsh crakes were only just settling in and could be particularly vulnerable.

“Like many New Zealand birds, they’ve evolved to combat avian predation from the sky, so marsh crake are perfectly camouflaged and when they feel threatened, they’ll run and hide,” she said.

“That’s great if you have, say, a falcon or harrier above you, but when the threat is coming from a land-based predator that operates by smell, they’re basically left very, very vulnerable.

“You can imagine this 15cm-long bird trying to attack a cat.

“That’s not going to go down well for the bird, probably.”

Harding-Shaw said feral cats were already a major challenge for the region.

“In terms of feral cats, there’s thousands of them in the hills, absolutely thousands, and they roam everywhere across the Southern Alps.

“They’re in all ecosystems, really hardy, really smart, adaptable and can live on nearly anything, a huge problem to get on top of.”

Feral cats were recently added to Predator Free 2050s hitlist, which could unlock more funding for projects that target them.

However, pet cats roaming near towns could complicate trapping efforts, Harding-Shaw said.

Whakatipu Wildlife Trust asked Queenstown Lakes District Council to make microchipping and desexing mandatory, partly because some feral cat traps switched off if they detected a microchipped pet cat.

It also wanted the council to consider an education campaign about keeping cats inside at night.

Queenstown Lakes District Council responded that it would investigate cat management as part of its Climate and Biodiversity Plan 2025-28.

Shotover Primary School teacher Emma Watts hoped local cat owners would start keeping their felines indoors before any chicks hatched.

“It feels like you’re facing a losing battle,” she said.

“We have paradise ducks down there that are having ducklings, and we’re hoping that the marsh crake is going to breed down there.

“We’ve got pūkeko we hope will breed down there as well, and you just think what chance are they going to have, if there are lots of cats there?

“We love cats, we love animals ... but we would love to educate our community for their domesticated cats to be kept in at night.”

– RNZ