By Dani Ryder | Fundraising Manager
Investment in thermal imaging and drone technology is improving the monitoring of reintroduced mammals on AWC’s Faure Island Wildlife Sanctuary, a feral-free haven off the coast of Western Australia.
Part of the Shark Bay World Heritage Area, Faure Island Wildlife Sanctuary is completely free of feral herbivores and predators, and home to critically important populations of Burrowing Bettong (Bettongia lesueur), Banded Hare-wallaby (Lagostrophus fasciatus), Western Barred Bandicoot (Shark Bay Bandicoot) (Perameles bougainville) and Shark Bay Mouse (Pseudomys fieldi).They also wanted to see if the technology could enable a better understanding of the behaviour of some of the reintroduced species, specifically Burrowing Bettongs (Boodies).
AWC ecologists had long suspected that Boodies were introducing a bias to current population estimates by moving around; that they were possibly ‘following’ and ‘escorting’ the ecologists during spotlight surveys and therefore being counted more than once.
The thermal camera proved excellent at detecting mammals.
As suspected, the team found that Burrowing Bettongs tended to ‘investigate’ people as they walked through the bush, potentially biasing population estimates through double counting.
Preliminary results suggest the technology may be an effective tool for monitoring bandicoots; however, the limited resolution made it difficult to distinguish between Burrowing Bettongs and Banded Hare-wallabies, which are similarly sized macropods.
Initial estimates of population size from the drone footage were comparable to those generated from standard spotlight surveys, demonstrating that the latter remains an effective method for generating population estimates.
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