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Demonstration site: Southern Ark, Victoria

Project Leader: Dr Anne Dennis, Vic Department of Sustainability and Environment

Aim: To facilitate the recovery of native animals across one million hectares of public land in Far East Gippsland through the establishment of an integrated
large-scale and on-going fox control program

Project: 10.u.4 and IA CRC-supported PhD students Tony Buckmaster and Alex Diment

Project summary

Southern Ark is a major new conservation initiative that aims to facilitate the recovery of a suite of native mammals, birds and reptiles by significantly reducing foxes across approximately one million hectares of public land in Far East Gippsland.

The Southern Ark project is:

the largest scale fox control project in SE Australia
an established investment platform (over $500K per annum) with the regional infrastructure required to manage a complex project and on which to build additional projects
a collaborative cross-tenure project with strong stakeholder support among the relevant public land managers, research organisations and community.

Southern Ark is an Invasive Animals CRC Demonstration Site involving study of:

the ecology of feral cats in south-eastern Australian temperate forests. Little knowledge is available of feral cat ecology in temperate forested areas of south-east Australia. This project will examine a range of issues related to increasing our knowledge of the impact and management of feral cats in the environment. It includes interactions of feral cats with other predators and their responses to a lowering of fox numbers, habitat relationships, diet and trials of techniques for monitoring abundance.
interactions between predator re-invasion rates and thresholds of prey species response to fox control in south-eastern Australia. This project will investigate theoretical thresholds at which fox suppression elicits a response in prey organisms (ie the point at which fox predation is no longer the major force driving prey populations) and compare these with field observations. The interactions between prey responses and fox re-invasion rates (eg at the edges of baited areas or from unbaited ‘control’ areas) will also be examined. Information generated will be used to guide the design and monitoring of predator management programs so as to optimise their efficiency and effectiveness.
effective techniques for protecting biodiversity from the threat of feral cats in various habitats, as previously undertaken by Dr Liz Denny under project 6.U.1.

Alongside this project, PhD student Tony Buckmaster is examining a range of issues related to increasing our knowledge of the impact and management of feral cats in the environment including:

interactions of feral cats with other predators and their responses to a lowering of fox numbers
habitat relationships
diet and trials of techniques for monitoring abundance.

IA CRC-supported student Alex Diment is also working on the Southern Ark project. He is investigating the ecology of foxes in response to lethal control and developing techniques for monitoring the efficacy of control programs. The major aims are to investigate fox movements and mortality in relation to control measures, to develop techniques for estimating fox abundance, and to predict native species response to fox control and evaluate methods to measure that response. Information generated will be used to guide the design and monitoring of predator management programs so as to optimise their efficiency and effectiveness.

Key achievements

Curiosity^® cat bait uptake field trials have been completed at the Southern Ark demonstration site. Cats were found to take the cat bait, however this has met with strong competition from the corvids (the crow family: non-target animals) and highlights opportunities for future baiting technique refinement.
Fox scat collection is now complete at the demonstration site. A total of 1,600 km has been systematically searched for fox scats, (400 hours of search effort over an 18 month period). Over 1,000 predator scats were collected, of which 481 scats have been subject to DNA analysis.
IA CRC-supported student Alex Diment presented his research results and promoted the IA CRC at the Society for Conservation Biology Congress in Beijing in July 2009. Alex has completed and submitted his fox ecology PhD.
Review of cat ecology and management strategies in Australia published and launched in February 2010.

Key deliverables

All fox scats that have provided individual ID (from DNA analysis) will be subject to diet analysis.
Population study of cats and results of cat dietary analysis.
Completion of two PhD theses.
Submission of research publications by both PhD students.

Project team

Alex Diment, Tony Buckmaster, Prof. Chris Dickman, Dr Liz Denny (Sydney Uni), Dr Anne Dennis, Mark Doyle, Dr Stephen Henry, Andrew Murray, Dr Alan Robley, Southern Ark field crew (Vic DSE), Assoc. Prof. Stephen Sarre (UC).

Project partners

IA CRC, University of Sydney, Victorian Department of Sustainability and Environment, University of Canberra.