From 2011, the Foundation is funding the research of Bronwyn Fancourt, PhD candidate at the School of Zoology, University of Tasmania.
Bronwyn is researching key threats and agents of decline for the Eastern Quoll. She is monitoring Eastern Quoll populations at Cradle Mountain National Park, Judbury and Bruny Island and Cradoc, near Hobart.
In early August 2011, Bronwyn had recently returned from a 16-day stint in the field, “chasing the little critters around!” She has completed two blocks of field work so far, visiting each of the monitoring sites and collecting samples for analysis and data from each quoll during May and July this year.
Bronwyn will be out in the field every second month until the end of 2013, collecting information to help discover the reasons for the decline of this charismatic species, and her findings will have important implications for future Recovery Plans for the Eastern Quoll.
Bronwyn's Update from December 2011:
Well, the November field work really was a mix of fortunes. Quoll numbers at Cradoc and Judbury were much on par with previous months (low), with mainly regulars coming back to see us from previous months and years. But unfortunately there was no sign of juveniles coming into the traps.
These sites were surveyed mid-November, which may have been a tad early to see the juveniles start to emerge from their dens.
Eastern quolls are seasonal breeders, with a very short synchronised breeding period over mid-May to mid-June each year. Because of this, juveniles all emerge and enter the population around late November – early December each year, but there are a few variables that may affect when we start to see them at any given site.
Firstly, it obviously depends on when they mate. If they were keen to “get going” and mate at the beginning of the season around mid-May, then the offspring should emerge around a month earlier than those whose parents were a bit slower off the mark (or whose mothers could run faster to get away from the boys!).
Also, it depends on the number of pouch young that survive. Eastern quolls can rear up to 6 young in one litter, and most females in their first and second years manage to rear 6 young right through to independence. But if they lose some or only rear 2 or 3, then the reduced competition between the offspring means they tend to develop faster, and hence will be ready to face the big, bad world earlier than those in a litter of 6.
So having said that, I’m hoping the reason we didn’t see any juveniles at Cradoc or Judbury was just a timing thing, and hopefully they have all since emerged and are all running around chasing each other’s tails as I type. I guess we will find out in January.
Cradle Mountain Visitors
Cradle Mountain yielded some good news. While the numbers had been disturbingly low all year and reduced to zero in September, we had a small win in November. While we didn’t trap any quolls on the first night (just devils and possums), we did find a black quoll running around near Ronny Creek in the national park when we went spotlighting on the second night. I predicted we would trap him that night in trap 13 (the nearest trap to where we had seen him) and much to our delight, he was waiting in trap 13 for us first thing in the morning.
He was so impressed to see us, he came back again the next night into a trap a bit further down the road (I think he liked the bed and breakfast we had on offer for him). He is now named “Pumba” and is an 18 month old quoll that we hadn’t seen before. Either he has recently dispersed in from surrounding areas, or he has managed to elude us for the past year. So while one quoll isn’t what I would call a “stable and secure population”, it’s nice to know they haven’t suffered a total local extinction at this site (well, not yet). I’m hoping we will see some new juveniles dispersing in from nearby areas when we go back in January.
Bruny Island Plagues
And finally, the highlight of the month - Bruny Island. I had heard many of the Bruny locals refer to the quoll population over there as a “plague”, and while my previous trapping had definitely yielded more quolls than elsewhere in Tasmania, I wouldn’t have called it a plague. Well, I can now say I am very familiar with the term, and concur wholeheartedly. It was awesome (but extremely tiring for myself and my amazing volunteer Jo).
The juveniles had started to emerge, and they were absolutely everywhere! After we set the usual 30 traps on the first afternoon, we went out spotlighting that night. We saw 13 quolls (mainly juveniles) running around on the road and verges, and this was just on the way to where our traps were set. It sounds a bit scary knowing these naïve juveniles were running around on the main road, but for those of you who haven’t been to Bruny Island, the last ferry to the island stops before 8pm, and then the wildlife pretty much have the road to themselves, with barely a vehicle seen all night.
Once we entered the paddock near our traps, we drove a 3.5km track in 40 minutes and counted 43 eastern quolls. It was an amazing site. I am sure there were many, many more that we didn’t see due to the grass stalks being around 30-60cm long, but as I shone the spotlight into the grass, there were quoll eyes looking back at me everywhere. I spent most of the time worrying about the ones that kept running back and forwards in front of the vehicle and making sure I didn’t run them over. They were mainly juveniles, and didn’t seem to be bothered by us or the vehicle at all.
Needless to say, they had swamped the traps as well. Of the 30 traps we set, only 2 hadn’t been touched. We trapped 19 quolls that night (18 were new animals to me, mostly juveniles), they had managed to steal the bait out of 5 of the traps without being caught, and had set off 4 other traps from the outside without being caught (and without getting the bait). Jane, our smallest juvenile was only 410gm.
We started processing animals at 6am and finished around 8.30pm, and we still hadn’t cleaned or re-set any of the traps. It was a very, very long day. We decided that we would only set 10 traps that night (the ones that didn’t have animals in them that day) and in hindsight that was a very good move. We got 9 quolls in those 10 traps the next morning, and they had stolen the 10th bait without being caught.
We were done by 1.30 pm and then spent the rest of the afternoon scrubbing the 31 dirty traps. I can assure you, scrubbing smeared quoll poo off traps is not the most enjoyable aspect of field work, especially after it has been baking in the sun on most of the traps for over a day and a half! We usually wash and rebait the traps as we go along, but I only had one volunteer and the priority was getting the animals out of the traps and released back into the wild as soon as we could, so the cleaning was left until the next day.
We set 15 traps on the last night, and caught 11 quolls, including 2 in one trap! That was a first for me. The other 5 traps had either the bait stolen, or the trap had been set-off by the animal from the outside. All up on Bruny, we captured 33 individual quolls, with 39 captures out of 55 traps.
My heartfelt thanks go to my amazing volunteer Jo, who worked tirelessly throughout the stint without another volunteer to assist. I had thought about taking a second volunteer with me, but as we hadn’t seen any juveniles at any of the other sites, I wrongly assumed that we wouldn’t see them on Bruny yet either. BAD ASSUMPTION.
I have now spread out my January work on Bruny over 5 nights instead of 3, and we will be setting less traps each night so we can get the animals back home ASAP (and us back to bed ASAP). I have 2 volunteers lined up to help and hopefully we won’t see a repeat of the long hours. Unfortunately a lot of the juveniles would have disappeared from the population by then, so we should see less quolls, but I’ve learned never to make assumptions when dealing with wildlife.
Thanks to the Volunteers!
Thanks again to all my volunteers who helped out on the November field work and to those who have committed to helping out in January. The January field work is well into the planning stage, and the volunteers are currently being confirmed.
I will be doing some remote camera work during February and March. I am also in the process of confirming my March field dates with each of the study sites. Stay tuned!
