Testing eradication of exotic rodents

Two different methods for the eradication of exotic rodents were being tested on Corvo Island.

Abundance estimate of rodents on Cory's shearwater colonies

Every month the team sets up a trap grid for rats and mice at the Cory's shearwater colonies. trough this capture/recapture method we can monitor the population of rodents and know their densities and home ranges.

Wild cats detection with surveillance cameras

The project has 17 surveillance cameras that are used to analyze the variation in the abundance of wild cats among different colonies.
Every two weeks a technician visits the colonies to check and move each camera to a new capture point.

Cat census in Corvo island

The project team monthly conducted a series of activities to monitor the cat population on the island.
This summer, with the cooperation of the Corvo inhabitants, we made a campaign consisted on the neutering of all the domestic cats inthe village and to tag them with a small identification microchip.
This campaign is necessary to prevent the increase of the feral cat population in the near future.

Looking for cats and who look at them!

As mentioned previously, last month we began monitoring the activities of cats around the colonies of Cory's shearwater. For this we use automatic cameras with infra-red sensor. This work results in a few thousand pictures every 2 weeks that need to be processed. This is where you can be really helpful.

The processing can be done from your home and is just needed an internet connection and Microsoft Excel program. Below is an example of one of the cat pictures recorded last week.

If you are interested, get in touch to send you more information.
Just comment on this post or else send an email to nuno.oliveira@spea.pt.

Cheers!

Technical visit from New Zealand to Biological Reserve of Corvo

Although the tests to the anti-predator fence have been successful with regard to mice, the same was not true regarding rats and cats. In view of these difficulties, we found ourselves in need of resorting to Xcluder, a New Zealand expert team in erradications and anti-predator fences.


It was with this objective that during this weekend a technique of Xcluder, Jo Ritchie, visited Corvo Island. Meanwhile we were walking around the boundaries of Raven Biological Reserve where we want to build the anti-predator fence, Jo was indicating possible problems and consequent solutions due topographical features and the typical hard weather conditions of Corvo Island.

Jo, Pedro e Sandra

The concluding remarks we got from Jo were very exciting and hopefully we have the Biological Reserve of Corvo fenced and free of predators before the end of this year.


Greetings from Corvo.

Starting with mice monitoring!

One more step has been done as soon as the new year came. We started monitoring 3 wild mice populations on Corvo Island. At the first year we are managing to get general mice abundance values and understand possible variations around one full year. Our main aim, at this point, is to define periods of time when occur higher and lower population numbers.

To approach this aim, we setted down 3 capture grids: one at project reserve, another one at high altitude and a third one at low altitude and under any kind of ecological management.



I fell free to tell you guys that our captures are going well.

To keep going with this work we still waiting and praying to rats Sherman traps arrive, so we can do the same work with rats.

Looks like Corvo inhabitants can keep labelling us "The rats guys".