Such awesome work♥️ wondering what the deer/rabbit management looks like and if you've seen any impact of those efforts in the survey data? That would be such a rewarding outcome to see their decline correlated with incline in natives.
We're fortunate to not have many rabbits at The Quoin, though we do keep an eye on them. Feral cats are more problematic, as they're very hard to trap and they outcompete and/or kill small mammals and birds. Again they are relatively few in number but their impact is concerning and it's a focus for us. But we do have a relatively large number of feral deer.
Feral deer are one of the biggest threat to biodiversity, causing noticeable wide-scale impact on our lowland grasslands. We have an organised deer hunting program and expect to remove 40% more deer this year than the year before. We do see some evidence that deer numbers are down, compared to kangaroo:
- we're now much less likely to see deer outside their main areas (unsurprisingly, grassland with permanent water); and
- our year-on-year camera-trap data shows a change in kangaroo:deer ratio from around 1:1 to 2:1.
There are many factors in play, however, and it's too early to infer causation. It'll be interesting to see results from the upcoming summer deployment.
Deer are highly mobile and very predator-aware: while some of that will be population reduction (certainly compared to the counterfactual where we don't try to control them), some of it will be due to the deer changing behaviour and staying away from danger. Deer don't care about human property boundaries, so coordinating and sharing data with our neighbours is important.
Such awesome work♥️ wondering what the deer/rabbit management looks like and if you've seen any impact of those efforts in the survey data? That would be such a rewarding outcome to see their decline correlated with incline in natives.
Hi Louis!
We're fortunate to not have many rabbits at The Quoin, though we do keep an eye on them. Feral cats are more problematic, as they're very hard to trap and they outcompete and/or kill small mammals and birds. Again they are relatively few in number but their impact is concerning and it's a focus for us. But we do have a relatively large number of feral deer.
Feral deer are one of the biggest threat to biodiversity, causing noticeable wide-scale impact on our lowland grasslands. We have an organised deer hunting program and expect to remove 40% more deer this year than the year before. We do see some evidence that deer numbers are down, compared to kangaroo:
- we're now much less likely to see deer outside their main areas (unsurprisingly, grassland with permanent water); and
- our year-on-year camera-trap data shows a change in kangaroo:deer ratio from around 1:1 to 2:1.
There are many factors in play, however, and it's too early to infer causation. It'll be interesting to see results from the upcoming summer deployment.
Deer are highly mobile and very predator-aware: while some of that will be population reduction (certainly compared to the counterfactual where we don't try to control them), some of it will be due to the deer changing behaviour and staying away from danger. Deer don't care about human property boundaries, so coordinating and sharing data with our neighbours is important.