A new bylaw is being proposed to protect Kaikōura’s native birds and improve the wellbeing of cats.
With the Kaikōura District Council’s dog control bylaw due to be reviewed, the council has decided to draft a new animal control bylaw with a section for cats.
The decision follows calls from local conservationists to help protect banded dotterels / pohowera, which nests along the Kaikōura coastline.
The birds come under threat from predators, including stray and feral cats, during nesting season.
Alongside the new bylaw, the council will partner with the SPCA to promote subsidised desexing and microchipping of cats.
Council chief executive Will Doughty said the new bylaw will be developed over the next 18 months and will be subject to consultation.
‘‘We’ve looked at what’s been done in other councils and we found this is now becoming a lot more mainstream.
‘‘There are benefits from a cat health perspective and it’s good from a wider environmental perspective, so it goes beyond just the protecting the birds.
‘‘But the big thing is in the education.’’
The council is working with Environment Canterbury and the Department of Conservation to look at restrictions on nesting sites.
The dotterel nesting season runs from September to December, with the birds under threat from dogs, vehicles and human activity, as well as cats.
Doughty said the subsidised desexing and microchipping programme will receive ratepayer funding from the council’s environmental projects fund.
Kaikōura couple Ailsa McGilvary-Howard and Ted Howard made an appeal to a council workshop in March to help protect the dotterels.
While the dotterel can be found on braided rivers and coastlines in other parts of the South Island, Kaikōura is like ‘‘a whirlpool’’ which sucks birds in because there appears to be plenty of resources, McGilvary-Howard said.
The beach areas with the most dotterel nesting sites are at South Bay between the Coastguard and The Caves, and further north between the West End shopping area and the New World supermarket.
McGilvary-Howard has been monitoring dotterel nests on the Kaikōura coastline voluntarily for more than a decade and completed a self-funded banded dotterel study in 2016.
Howard monitors the northern section, and said around 150 eggs were laid this season, with around 40 hatching, but just one chick survived.
A further four chicks survived at South Bay, but more adult birds were lost to predator attacks.
LDR is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air.
