More evidence of low interaction rates with traditional traps

Some great research on hedgehogs in the McKenzie Basin by Nick Foster.

Nick describes how 3 hedgehogs had a GPS tracker fitted and were then released and their movements tracked. The landscape the animals were released into is populated with a grid of DOC200 traps (the yellow dots in the image below).

The movements of the hedgehogs through the landscape are shown by the the white lines in the image below.

It's worth watching the full talk here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-uglaqwD5o).  There's a good discussion on this 21:00 minutes in (we feel your pain Nick).

The outcome was that none of the hedgehogs were caught. This is yet another piece of evidence using a completely different method that shows the need for high interaction rate traps.

Even with the best will in the world (and we do keep willing it), deploying lots of low interaction rate devices is not going to achieve eradication. We need to find ways to convince predators that interacting with our deployed devices is a good idea.  We need tools with high interaction rates.  We'll keep working on that.

As always, we welcome your feedback so don't hesitate to get in touch - leave a comment below or email us at blog@cacophony.org.nz.