Pest Free Banks Peninsula have successfully cleared hedgehogs from a section of Kaitōrete Spit.
It's believed to be the first time that's been achieved on mainland Aotearoa and outside a fenced sanctuary.
Helping to make this possible is Nightshade, a three-year-old Border Terrier.
"Nightshade is a conservation indicator dog. So she goes around looking everywhere for hedgehogs, and then when she finds a hedgehog, she lets me know," PFBP Dog Handler Karin Bos told 1News.
"I remember in the lockdown, we used to have a lot of Zoom meetings with other pest eradication programs across NZ, and they all said, get yourself some dogs because it is a game changer."
PFBP is one of the country's largest community-led projects aimed at getting rid of predators and protecting vulnerable wildlife.
"Because they have no natural predators here, they have just exploded in number," Christchurch City Council's regional parks biodiversity team leader Alison Evans told 1News.
"They are hoovering up all the native insects, and they also eat lizards and attack ground-nesting birds."
Bos told 1News they're trying to remove all the possums, mustelids, hedgehogs, and feral cats at Kaitōrete.
"Hedgehogs have the smallest home range, so we've got a very extensive trapping network here with all sorts of different traps," she said.
There is one every 100sq metres and Nightshade helps make sure nothing is left behind.
"The problem with any traps, or toxins for that matter, is that we are asking the predator to do something it wouldn't usually do," Bos said.
"It wouldn't go into a box or whatever, while if we use a dog to find the hedgehog, then the hedgehog can just be natural and do its own thing."
Council scientists are working with students from Lincoln University, hoping to discover which insects the hedgehogs have been eating.
"So once the hedgehogs are gone, the idea will be that we will have an idea of which species are likely to bounce back and thrive," Evans said.
This project has financial backing until 2026.
"Funding is really driven by the community and how much value that the community has in this project and in the biodiversity and what's in their back door," project team lead Tim Sjoberg told 1News.
The project used a three-step detection method. This included traps, trail cameras, and regular sessions with Nightshade.
Proving a successful example of how we could meet our 2050 predator-free goals.
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