'Southern Ark' aims to facilitate the recovery
of native mammals, birds and reptiles across approximately one
million hectares of public land in far East Gippsland through the
establishment of an integrated, large-scale and on-going fox
control program.
The Southern Ark project
is:
-
The largest scale fox control project in south east Australia
(approx. 1 million hectares)
-
An established initiative of the Victorian government (investing
over $500K/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 also an Invasive Animals CRC demonstration site
involving study of:
a) interactions of feral cats with other predators and
their responses to a lowering of fox numbers
b) habitat relationships
c) diet, and
d) trials of techniques for monitoring abundance.
Progress
Tony Buckmaster has trapped 11 cats with 10 GPS collars deployed
while bait uptake experiments commenced in September 2007. Home
range analysis and habitat modelling will follow from GPS data
retrieval and DNA is being analysed from hair, scat and tissue to
allow for GIS modelling of dispersion based on relatedness.
Monitoring and data collection is also well underway in Alex
Diment's project. Eight foxes have been fitted with radio collars
and good home-range estimates achieved. Sand-plot and bait-take
data is being collected to provide a relative abundance index,
while scat analysis will give absolute population
estimates. Remote-camera monitoring is also ongoing.
Dr. Elizabeth Denny has completed a review of cat ecology and
cat management strategies in Australia and this report should be
published soon.
Project collaborations:
