Janet Wilson was planning a trip to show me the whio protection project she’s been coordinating in the southern Ruahine Range for 14 years.
“There are a few older women who like to come out,” she said. “I call them social trappers. I’ll get them to come up with us.”
We were headed to Iron Gate Hut for two nights and would check traps along the Ōroua River and up towards the tops.
The Ruahine Range is 100km long and part of the North Island’s mountainous backbone. Rolling tussock tops and gnarly tūpare leatherwood on leading ridgelines give way to forested gorges where rivers run steep and fast. It is great tramping country. It’s also great country for whio (blue ducks), and Ruahine rivers provide habitat for the North Island’s southernmost whio breeding population. But stoats and rats also love this country, and our endemic, ancient and now endangered taonga are in trouble.
We met at Wilson’s ‘shed’ near the forest park where she and partner Graham Peters have bought a block of land overlooking the Ōroua Valley. That’s how much they love this place, and it makes a great trapping base. The other women she’d invited (Yvette Cottam, Jenny McCarthy and Anne Lawrence, aged from their mid-50s to early 70s with various medical, teaching, research, DOC and Backcountry Trust volunteer backgrounds) were also waiting at the shed. “We’ve left some eggs for you to carry,” they laughed, their well-worn packs already bulging. I was just able to squeeze 24 eggs in plastic cases into my tiny new pack. Perhaps a trapping expedition, even a social one, was not the time to trial my new lightweight tramping regime.

