An enthusiastic group of students head to school early on Friday morning and hold a row of traps along a walking path near their school.
They empty the traps before the school day starts. The emerging conservationists have been rewarded for their efforts with a Keep Dunedin Beautiful award for best school project.
The school's assistant principal, Dean Gordon, said Fulton Hogan built the track and students learned about pest control to help protect the native bird population.
The patrol project has been running since the beginning of the year and in the first weeks more animals were captured than in recent times, which proves the success of the unit, he said.
Mr Gordon said students were very excited about the win at a ceremony in Dunedin yesterday and were keen to return to school to talk about it.
Fulton Hogan won his own award for his contribution to the collaborative project: the Sustainable Entrepreneurship Award.
The students also planted more than 300 native trees, shrubs and grasses along the route.
Task Force Green volunteer David Robins won an individual award for his volunteer work, which included cleaning up litter and removing graffiti.
Other winners included Full Court Family, which was about both basketball and keeping the court clean, and Switch — Idea Services, a day care center for people with intellectual disabilities.
They often cleaned up litter.