4 September 2026
Sharing the mahi This week Katikati News takes readers overseas to Rarotonga in the Cook islands, where Jacapo Dozzo and Alanna Smith, pictured, are setting a multispecies AT220 pest trap as part of a new conservation partnership with people from Waihī Beach. When Waihī Beach environmental
coordinator Pippa ‘Pip’ Coombes visited Rarotonga last year, she was curious about the island’s conservation work. She didn’t expect a conversation to eventually lead to volunteers hauling automated predator traps high into one of the island’s steepest and most inaccessible valleys.
Almost a year later, that is exactly what has happened. Sustainable Waihī Beach, under the Live Well Waihī Beach umbrella, has partnered with Rarotonga’s Te Ipukarea Society (TIS) to introduce automated predator-control technology to the Takuvaine Valley cloud
forest. Ten AT220 and AT230 automated resetting traps have been installed more than 400m above sea level – the first traps of their kind to be used in the Cook Islands. Read the full story of how the project came about on page 3. Photo / Supplied
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