Friday 7th June: Parks Info night presented by Kailee Savoia, Grampians Ark Landscape-scale fox control for threatened fauna recovery.
The July gathering of FOGG was a presentation by Kailee Savoia, PV Coordinator of the Grampians Ark project.
Kailee provided an overview of the project work thus far and outlined some of the plans for the future. We also had William (Bill) Playne, PV Ranger – Visitor and Community, join us to listen to Kailee’s presentation and he assisted with some of the questions raised. Kailee explained that Grampians Ark is a state government funded project from the State Government’s Weeds and Pests on Public Land Initiative. Funding was allocated over four years with this project ending in 2025. It supports herself and two other ranger roles as well as funding the materials and equipment required. Foxes are listed as a threatening process for several species in the Grampians Gariwerd, namely: Brush-tail Rock Wallaby, Heath Mouse, Long-nosed Potoroo, Smoky Mouse and Southern Brown Bandicoot, making these species a priority for the Grampians Ark. The presence of these species and others in the park, and their habitat, has been established as a result of prior studies by various researchers plus ongoing camera trapping. This allows targeting of control measures to priority locations. While these are the primary species identified it was also highlighted that many other species were under threat in the park, including birds and reptiles.
Foxes are also not the only threat and Kailee brought cats into the story as well as mentioning climate change and wildfires, plus weeds and other pathogens such as phytophthora. There is scope for work on other species.
Baiting programs for foxes began as perimeter programs but have transitioned to internal trails using internal roads and tracks which Kailee was able to demonstrate with quality graphics. Pulse baiting, three times a year, has now moved to an ongoing program fortnightly. Parks staff have replaced contractors for cost savings and flexibility to get more done. Stations are about 1km apart and checked/replaced fortnightly. There is also a recent addition of four runs of on-foot baiting on walking tracks in remote areas to increase control. This occurs as pulses in spring, summer and autumn. It is expected to increase baiting density around high-value conservation areas to provide further protection for these species.
Estimates of fox numbers in the park are 4- 8/sq km. This equates to 6680 to 13,360 foxes in the park while the average density of cats across Australia is 0.2-0.7/sq km, equating to 334 to 1169 cats across the park.
Along with baiting for foxes, a combination of soft-jaw leghold and cage traps have been employed to target foxes and cats respectively. They have tended to catch both in either, but soft-jaws have been more effective. These are labour intensive control methods and can only be focused around high value conservation areas. Last financial year 1200 trap-night traps were laid with 35 captures. A major finding thus far is that trapping is most effective at cub dispersal so we can focus our resources during the months of November to February for maximum impact.
Trapping the predators is not the end of the story; Kailee discussed how cats in particular are dissected and sampled. Stomach contents are important to understand what these predators are taking and not surprisingly there are some horrendous results. One trapped cat had the remains of 7 birds, 4 antechinus and one reptile in its stomach. CATS DO A LOT OF DAMAGE! Various body parts of captures are also despatched to collaborating agencies where genetics, viruses present, parasites etc are researched. A future plan, which is pending approval, is to employ aerial baiting using a commercial product Curiosity®. If approved this would be undertaken over two days in mid-winter to avoid the possibility of reptiles taking baits. An area of approximately 30,000 hectares would be baited with baits laid at the rate of eight baits per sq km (100 hectares). If approval was not forthcoming for aerial baiting, funds would be used to increase trapping and shooting efforts. Kailee responded to a number of queries. On the question of the use of a widely publicised poison delivery system, Felixer, Kailee was able to explain that it is not registered for use in Victoria and they are therefore not able to employ it. On a question about deer and goat control, Kailee and Bill are not closely involved but they were able to confirm that during the three years of funding that was received, between 2018-2021, this enabled the control of approximately 400 goats and 400 deer.
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