It's been a hard-fought effort but Wellington's Miramar Peninsula is predator-free - having eradicated the last of the ship rats.
It's taken years of work, a huge volunteer effort and support from the 20,000 locals but it's given the team behind the project a boost to clear the entire region of predators.
It's the gateway to the capital with a welcome sign to boot. Now Miramar Peninsula is welcoming some news of its own - it's predator-free.
"It's been a long time coming, but today we are at zero," said Predator Free Wellington project director James Willcocks.
It's quite the celebration because all rats, stoats and weasels have been eradicated from this urban area.
"This has never been done anywhere else in the world that we're aware of and it's taken a huge amount of effort and thousands and thousands of people on the journey with us," Willcocks said.
It's a journey that began years ago. Predator Free Wellington hoped to have them eradicated by 2019. But it hasn't been an easy task.
"It's been tough you know, it's really been building the area as you're trying to fly it," Willcocks said.
But they've achieved the goal with over 10,000 bait stations set up in backyards across the peninsula - that's almost 1000 hectares covered.
Hundreds of cameras monitor the hotspots too. The most important part has been a huge volunteer effort led by Predator Free Miramar lead Dan Henry.
"It is proof that if enough people put enough gas behind it and contribute that you can achieve great things," he said.
The area has already recorded a 71 percent increase in native bird detections.
"Even throughout the city in the centre of the city you can see people looking out for birds and listening to birdsong. It's quite special," said Wellington Mayor Tory Whanau.
Predator Free Wellington has already moved onto phase two - Island Bay to the CBD.
"And then we bite off the next chunk, the next chunk and the next chunk till we get to Porirua," Willcocks said.
But the work in Miramar isn't over. Tomorrow it's back to checking the traps and making sure the predators stay out.
"It's what we have been doing for the last six years and we're not going to shake the habit that easy," Henry said.
But today they celebrate the first step in their goal to make Wellington the first predator-free capital in the world.
