Saving the Slow Loris

Saving the Slow Loris through Research & Education in south-east Asia

Stephanie Poindexter and Claire Cardinal of Oxford Brookes University

A Talk to the Berkshire Mammal Group

3 November 2016

Explaining that the advertised speaker, Professor Anna Nekaris of Oxford Brookes University, was unavailable but had kindly arranged substitutes from her research team, Edwin introduced the two guest speakers and thanked them for stepping in. They were to present on complementary aspects the originally agreed theme – the plight of the Slow Loris – illustrating it with reference to the field studies they had individually undertaken for their degrees. Stephanie was a PhD student (originally from the USA) and would present first, followed by Claire who had recently completed her MSc in Primate Conservation.

Cognition and Conservation: measuring spatial cognition in Slow Loris and its application to reintroduction practices in Vietnam, Thailand and Indonesia

– Stephanie Poindexter

Stephanie set a sadly familiar scene of population depletion and defined the slow loris as a small nocturnal primate present in southeast Asia. There are nine species of loris in all, of which Stephanie was studying the Pigmy Slow Loris and the Bengal Slow Loris.

Clearly fascinated by her subject, Stephanie described some of their distinctive physical attributes, unusual aspects of their ecology that make them so interesting a species to study. They are conspicuously exceptional in their consumption of gum. They are reliant on a diet primarily of insects and tree sap and gum that is available all year round, supplemented by seasonal nectar. They grasp branches for hours without numbness or tiring. They are unusual among mammals in having periods of torpidity, and are the only primate to be venomous.

Yet there are many threats to the population, and human consumption is the most destructive: captured for the pet trade, used as photo props, and killed for the preparation of traditional medicine. Also deforestation has reduced their natural habitat.

Research

Stephanie’s research was into translocated individuals – those taken from the wild as pets or roadside rescues, taken to a rescue centre and reintroduced to the forest. It sounded a promising idea, but reintroduction can’t be rushed without detriment to the animals. Stephanie was to see how they adjusted, how, or indeed whether, they could re-assimilate.

Her work was based in two locations: The Little Fireface Project’s field station in Java, Indonesia (mainly agri-forest, but where at least the farmers would mark their field boundaries with the gum trees favoured by the slow loris), and Cuc Phuong Nah in Vietnam. This offers scare resources, but has been a protected area since 1993, supported by Frankfurt and Leipzig Zoos. Beside the Bengal and Pygmy Slow Loris, other vulnerable species there include the pangolin and langur. Stephanie spent five months in 2015 monitoring returned lorises and their range.

One of her subject species, the Pygmy Slow Loris, weighs a mere 400 grammes. It has seasonal coats that are distinctly different. Indeed its pellage originally suggested two separate species! It is endemic in Cambodia, Laos, China and Vietnam (but not Thailand where it has appeared but recently as result of human intervention). However, there are distinct genetic populations and so DNA testing is important to establish the historical range of individuals before their reintroduction. This is complicated further by the distinction between north and south populations within Vietnam, and so caution should be observed.

In order to monitor individual lorises, radio collars are fitted for 11 months and over time their movements can be tracked. It has become apparent that male and female home ranges overlap, suggesting promiscuous mating, whereas the home ranges of other species are often more distinct. The home range of slow lorises is roughly 20 hectares. However, reintroduced individuals fail to stabilise their range, which may be as large as 80 hectares, or four times as large as those raised in the wild.

Why, what is missing? What are they looking for? Possibly they looking for the type of home range whence they came originally. Natal Habitat Preference Induction analysis is the tool used to explore this proposition, and spatial cognition is the subject of Stephanie’s PhD.

Her data recorded, Stephanie moved on to Indonesia, to the Little Fireface Project’s field station in West Java. The project (LFP) was founded in 1993 by Anna Nekaris, and the field station in 2011. The staff covers a range of disciplines, including someone responsible for maintaining a positive presence on social media. The station’s motto is ‘Ecology – Education – Empowerment’, and over the past five years the team has collected a huge amount of data and learned quite a lot about the slow loris:

• Their dimensions vary considerably: 21-31 cm in length, 125-2,000 grammes in weight.

• Besides gum and insects, they feed on the nectar of flowers. Are they pollinators? They don’t appear to damage the flowers, so it is thought they might be.

• When not sleeping they are more social than expected, interacting and communicating relatively often. Social foraging, particularly when the flower component of their diet comes into season.

• They have one or two offspring a year after a six-month gestation. Infants stay with their mother for 16-18 months before dispersal and this is an unusually long period for a mammal of this size. Now first baby has borne her own baby, the full cycle of life has been witnessed.

• The slow loris is venomous, with saliva and brachial gland secretions. Buy why? Is it a predator avoidance adaptation? It seems that slow lorises cover themselves with brachial secretions when setting out to forage at night, so that hypothesis is supported. It is widespread practice in Indonesia to trim or remove the loris’s teeth in captivity to avoid venomous bites, and when Stephanie showed four photographs of a researcher’s face swelling after being bitten, it was easy to see why.

This is scientific study, however; how do the locals regard them? A positive view is important to the loris’s long-term survival, so the field station runs an education programme to cultivate local attitudes.

Education

The project has helped fund a local school and once a week runs a nature club for the children. The idea is to encourage them to value the wildlife of their locality, and especially the slow loris. LFP has published a picture book entitled Forest Protector, which is now available in German and the languages of Indonesia and Vietnam. The pictures are by the illustrator of Family Guy, Shelley Low (whose name – appropriately, if rendered S. Low – reflects her subject!). The participating children are asked to draw a picture or tell a story, and by the time the programme finishes marked changes in perception can be observed.

LFP also works with university students on Java. Placements are offered, and after participating in research work, the students give a presentation to others on their return to university. Judging science fairs is one of several other ways the Project has become involved in local education. It is a long-term investment.

Other areas of conservation activity

Monitoring fairs

Monthly market fairs are held in popular hotspots like Bali. Volunteers visit them repeatedly, but discreetly to gauge number of lorises and other animals involved in the trade.

Photo props

Lately as many as 10-15 animals can be paraded every day on social media. This is a conspicuous increase driven entirely by the huge growth of social media phenomenon itself.

Traditional medicine

Slow lorises are traditionally regarded beneficial for around 100 ailments, and are given to pregnant women to confer strength to their unborn babies, and placed under houses for good luck. The emphasis on medicine is particularly strong in Cambodia and Laos, though less so in Vietnam and not in Thailand where the slow loris wasn’t historically present.

Deforestation

This is difficult to fight, as Stephanie herself acknowledged. Creatures are pushed to higher altitudes (currently 1,300-1,700 m above sea level) to avoid the activity of farmers who are themselves being pressed to colonise new land. The field station has established a plant nursery to breed gum tree saplings. Farmers will accept free saplings and use these beneficial species as boundary markers, so a source of food remains available to the loris.

Next steps

Further studies are in preparation, as the field station is intended for on-going research. Vocalisation is a new area of interest, and recently acquired thermal imaging cameras offer new possibilities. The Project envisages more market surveys and more work with TV – several documentaries have already been made, including Jungle Gremlins of Java (which was to be shown on BBC 2 the following Saturday). For further information: www.nocturama.org

 

Communicating Conservation: using acoustics and education to develop understanding endangered Slow Lorises

and Gibbons in Vietnam and Java

– Claire Cardinal

Claire opened by saying she had wanted to make a contribution to conservation so undertook two studies for her MSc – admitting she had probably bitten off more than she could chew. Like Stephanie’s, her work lay in the twin fields of research and education:

• Whoop Troop – an education programme using puppetry

• An acoustics study of the Pygmy Slow Loris

Education

Claire’s education work was spread over two locations: LFP in Java and the Dao Tien Centre for Endangered Primate Species (set up eight years ago by Monkey World to protect slow lorises and gibbons).

Her objective was to create and evaluate a new educational resource, and establish whether it would be flexible to use as a template in different countries and for different species. As 70% of Asian primates are threatened, according to the IUCN Red List, human attitudes and behaviour need to change if they are to be saved. Knowledge and affinity are, therefore, an essential first step. It has been found that negative messages don’t help – they engender a rather hopeless sense of “well, what can we do?” It is better to provide positive messages of “awe and wonder”.

The project planned to present a three-month course to rural teenagers (aged about 12-14), a neglected audience for such work, and would compare its effect on participants in both Java and Vietnam. It would include a science component to develop interest and knowledge, and puppetry to engender affinity. Students would be asked to write and perform puppet shows – and at this point Claire demonstrated the use of two large naturalistic glove puppets.

Coverage was extended to six native animals – both countries share a common biosphere – including: the Javan Rhinoceros (of which there are only 50 left in the wild), Saltwater Crocodile, Leopard Cat, Rhinoceros Hornbill and Eurasian Hornbill. In Java the selection would included the Java Slow Loris and Silvery Java Gibbon, and in Vietnam, the Pygmy Slow Loris and Golden Cheeked Gibbon.

Data Collection

As the purpose of the project was to evaluate impact, it was important to find methods to measure the impact of ideas across the three schools and eight puppet shows. Claire turned to the techniques of social science.

Freelisting

By showing photographs and getting the children to write down what they thought of the subject, Claire had free access to potentially revealing terminology, from which she could form ‘word clouds’ in which frequency could be depicted graphically.

Cultural Domain Analysis

The technique assesses shared beliefs and knowledge. Are the participants thinking the same way? As the only commonality between the groups of students was the course, the results would (and did) show that they had learned something from it.

Saliency

Comparing statements made before and after the course, the importance of each word, based on frequency and average rank, could be established. If present, the course had taught participants something.

Content Analysis

Words were colour coded for ‘emotion’ and ‘knowledge’, or as ‘neutral’. After a course of creative writing there were far fewer neutral words. The change was indicated by a graphic depiction not unlike the election swingometer. Afterwards there were more empathetic, anthropomorphic and taxonomic words, and fewer emotional ones.

Such analyses suggested the effect of puppetry justified the study and such programmes would be useful as a tool in conservation education. The long-term impact is yet to be established – only time will tell – but Claire was pleased to report that after one school visit a girl in the audience arranged for her grandmother’s pet gibbon to be returned to a rescue centre – so a tangible short-term effect in that instance!

Acoustic Study

Claire admitted this was work in progress, with lots of data yet to analyse. The objective was to establish whether the Pygmy Slow Loris vocalised at an ultrasonic frequency. This is a new field of research, not studied before, and so is at the cutting edge. If successful it would provide a useful new tool for population monitoring, as the slow loris is difficult to find by visual means alone.

The task of acoustic monitoring has been made easier by technical advances and the equipment Claire used included: a bat detector, directional microphone and specialist software for birdcalls that transferred recordings into sonographs.

While in the field Claire would spend six hour shifts three nights a week sitting in the forest recording ultrasonic sound, monitoring released and captive Pygmy Slow Lorises in southern Vietnam. She described her time in the forest as feeling safe and secure on an island, hearing the insects waking up at 4am, and gibbons at 5.30.

The forest comprised dense thickets of bamboo growing back after the ravages of the Vietnam War, so Claire would use GPS to pinpoint the loris’ sleep sites, then monitor movement from a static, sedentary position. She now has 60 hours of ultrasonic recording, which she is still going through. The task is made more complicated by the higher frequency calls bouncing off trees; she showed us sonographs that could just as plausibly have been made by bats or insects. As she said, it is work in progress, with more report in future!

Project Splatter

A talk by Dr Sarah Perkins to the Berkshire Mammal Group

9^th February 2017

Dr Sarah Perkins is a wildlife biologist at Cardiff University, having started her career as a conservation officer for the UK Wildlife Trust. In an entire year of working as an Otter Conservation Officer, Sarah only ever saw one otter – a road-killed one – and became interested in quantifying the number of animals killed on the roads each year. She worked abroad for several years, working on wildlife diseases, before returning to the UK and taking a position at Cardiff. There her interest in the number of animals killed, which species are the most vulnerable, and whether there were hotspots of roadkill that could be mitigated against, led her to establish Project Splatter in 2013, as a collaborative citizen science project – the subject of her talk to the Berkshire Mammal Group.

Sarah opened by acknowledging that road kill is a common sight and asking generally how we engage with wildlife, and what the impact of roads might be on animal mortality. She turned to the journal, Science, which in December had published a paper on roadlessness. On screen was a map plotting the incidence of roads in red, lined with 1 km buffers into the surrounding habitat, and the road-free areas in blue, in which roads would have no effect on wildlife. 80% of the globe is still roadless, but much of this area is composed of the Arctic regions, the Siberian tundra and deserts in north Africa and Australia and other inhospitable environments. And the rest is divided into 600,000 fragmented habitats, half of which are less than 1 km in extent and only 7% are of the largest size category). Only 9.3% are protected areas. So the clear conclusion was that roads have the potential for a major impact on wildlife and its habitats.

The scale of road deaths

What might be the scale of wildlife road deaths, she asked, pointing to illustrative graphics: 100s, 10,000s, or 1,000,000s. Answering her own question – after an uneasy pause – Sarah said we simply don’t know, but can look at studies in other countries that have measured the effects direct vehicle collisions. They propose some dramatically varying estimates:

USA 80m birds killed on US roads per annum

Netherlands 0.2 – 2m birds

Belgium 4m

Denmark 8.3m

Spain 100,000

In the UK a PTES survey was launched in 2001, which has since measured mammals on roads for a period each summer. Usefully it has reflected the decline of the hedgehog, and also picked up a fall in rabbit numbers. But this survey is just in the summer, and just of mammals. Were there any other figures? Well, yes, Deer Collisions (www.deercollisions.co.uk) estimates 42,000 to 74,000 collision deaths a year, information drawn from police and insurance reports. The Mammal Society has produced estimates of 50,000 badger deaths a year, and 100,000 fox deaths. For birds a BTO Road Deaths Enquiry in 1960, at a time when there was rather less traffic than now, concluded a total of 2.9m avian road deaths. Sarah noted it took until 1965 for the figures to be published.

Project Splatter

To draw together contemporary data on all species, Sarah introduced Project Splatter as a continuous, UK-wide survey, set up in January 2013. She explained that it started out as a final year project, undertaken with some reluctance at first by Sam Stafford, an undergraduate reading Zoology at Cardiff. He devised a social media to capture direct reporting by members of the public, and such was its early success that he become highly motivated and earned the soubriquet, “Splatter Sam”. This early success was cemented by the involvement of the press, in particular the publication of a two-page, full colour spread in the Independent, prompting

wider media attention. It was, in Sarah’s words, “a fantastic start”.

The social media platform is designed to make the task of reporting simple and accessible. Reports can be sent in by iPhone app, Android app, Facebook, Twitter and by email or through the web. The scheme accepts both occasional and regular reporting – there need be no on-going commitment, though many of the 2,000 participants are regular contributors – and on Monday the project offers feedback, drawing attention to some of the quirkier reports.

www.projectsplatter.co.uk

The project’s purpose is to quantify and map British roadkill, determining which species are the most observed, and identifying spatial and temporal hotspots: the ‘where’ and ‘when’. It aims to raise awareness of the roadkill problem, and encourage mitigation (such as green bridges). Ultimately it seeks to reduce the negative impact of roads on wildlife.

Findings

To date, Project Splatter has accumulated over 35,000 records. These include 33 mammal species, from shrews to wild boar, and these represent 62% of the records.. Representing another 34% are the 74 bird species, from blackcap to buzzard. There are very few reptiles and amphibians. The five species most recorded as roadkill are:

15% Badgers

14% Rabbits

11% Foxes

7% Hedgehogs

7% Pigeons

And as for distribution, the records come from throughout the country, probably reflecting abundance. However, any analysis needs to account for reporter bias; there are few reports from the Highlands of Scotland, whereas Sussex generates more records than any other county. (There, a paramedic has been involved from the start and is a prolific provider of records.) Double counting is not considered a problem at this stage; with 2,000 reporters and 8,000 reports a year, there are simply not enough reports for duplicated to occur to any degree.

Berkshire

A map of the county indicated ribbons of reports along the M4, A34 and Vale of the White Horse, with a cluster around Newbury and a broader blanket of sightings to the west of the Thames around Abingdon.

In Berkshire pheasants are the most prevalent casualties, at 39% of reports compared with 23% nationally. (At 25% for badgers the local and national tallies are in line, though other species tend to be under represented.) But what do the figures suggest about pheasants’ behaviour. A graph of the monthly figures produce a peak in September and October, when naïve young birds are released, and in March, when feral pheasants escape into the countryside.

 

Hotspots

Using SaTScan models, the Project has identified nine county clusters for mammals, some comprising single species and some of multiple species. There are obvious clusters, such as for badgers in Somerset, where they are presumed to relate to animal abundance, while others are as yet unexplained, such as the concentration of rats in northern England.

For birds there are seven such clusters. An analysis of these suggests some behaviours tends to endanger certain species. Blackbirds, for instance, have a tendency to last-minute flight from possible predators, and a low, undulating flight pattern, and so are innately vulnerable to vehicles. In discussion afterwards it was noted that, conversely, crows have an enhanced ability to judge the paths of approaching danger, and avoid on-coming vehicles.

Sarah asked which roads were the most deadly: Motorways, A roads or B roads. The answer was A roads. Is this the effect of lighting, she wondered, increasing visibility and causing animal avoidance? Hedgehogs were cited as an example of a vulnerable species, falling from 30m in 1950, when there were far fewer motorways and major roads, to 1.5m in 1995. 20-40,00 are killed on roads per annum – far too high a figure.

Peak reporting is in September, July and April, with winter the lowest. Perhaps unsurprisingly the peaks coincide with seasonal breeding and dispersal activity, while many creatures hibernate during the winter. Yet this varies from year to year, according, in part to temperature and the weather, which affects activity and therefore vulnerability to vehicles.

Disappearance of carcasses

It is accepted that scavengers clear carcases and therefore evidence, so establishing the rate of disappearance would give a useful correction factor when analysing the figures. One early study was by Fred Slater, who set out chicken carcasses and measured the tracks of scavengers left in a surrounding sand pit. He established the rate of disappearance was rapid, suggesting that reporting was underestimated 12-16 fold.

To extend this research for the project’s own purposes the University of Cardiff undertook to study the rate of disappearance. Chicken heads were distributed by student Harry Williams at twelve locations around the city, with camera traps set up: some in parks, some in streets. As an amusing aside, Sarah recounted how some of the cameras disappeared, then reappeared, many with footage of puzzled residents investigating the device, and then, having realised what it was, putting it back! The survey was carried out both day and night, and recorded 120 sessions.

Six principal species of scavenger were identified: corvids, foxes, dogs, cats and gulls. How long it took for the carcasses to be taken varied according to the time of day: in the daytime it was very quick, but at night it tended to lie untouched until at dawn, when scavenging was dominated by foxes and domestic cats. Quantifying that, it was established there was a 75.8% chance of removal within 12 hours. On average it took 2 hrs, 13 mins in the day; 8 hrs and 47 mins at night.

To illustrate which scavengers eat carcasses, Sarah showed a short video made up of day and night-time footage from the camera trips. During the day there were plenty of corvids (crows and magpies), cats and dogs; at night, there were rats, foxes, gulls, magpies and – surprisingly – wood mice (visible mainly by their large reflective eyes). Urban foxes were brazen, while rural foxes markedly more timid.

Associated Research

Project Splatter’s records are considered open source and available to share, and so feed into several other studies. Among these are the records of polecats, which are sent to the Vincent Wildlife Trust to help monitor the expansion of this species out from central Wales. Records have been used to help with mapping invasive species, eg Wallaby in Surrey; Wild Boar in Bristol. But perhaps the most systematic is the 20-year-old otter project run by Liz Chadwick, also at Cardiff University. 

Cardiff University Otter Project

In this project otter carcasses are taken to Cardiff for post mortem examination, where the livers and kidneys are checked for contaminants in habitat, parasites are identified, signs of fecundity noted. Rather sadly, Sarah noted the discovery of four nearly full-term foetuses that had died when their mother had been hit. The results of post mortems contribute to various study programmes, the decline of eels and the presence of Toxoplasma gondii, for instance. The otter is a sentinel for watercourse purity and so much can be gained by their examination.

Dead or Alive

A spin-off project, entitled ‘Dead or Alive’, was set up to quantify popular interaction with wildlife; do most people see wildlife alive, or just as roadkill? The project conducted a four-week survey, eliciting 1,400 responses! To take one of the top five roadkill species, the badger, it was possible to establish that 7% of respondents had never seen one, but 88% had seen one dead. As few as 5% had only ever seen live badgers.

Only seen alive Ever seen dead

5% Badger 88%

Respondents were invited to leave comments too, and the responses indicated a high level of concern about the spread of invasive species.

Roadkill Sub-culture

Touching on an interaction of a more unusual nature, Sarah spent a few minutes describing some aspects of roadkill’s place in art, design, clothing and food. She pointed to the activity of ‘freegans’, those who eat roadkill, and the existence of roadkill chefs and ‘badger balti’. She illustrated some of the work of Adam Morrigan, the roadkill artist, and of Jez East/ton Design

Conclusions

Returning to Project Splatter, Sarah drew together the various threads of her talk, summarising the role of roadkill research as a contributor to:

• Conservation
• Understanding populations and behaviours
• Academic research, eg. the otter project
• Identifying habitat contamination
• Mapping invasive species
• Public engagement

She ended by urging the audience to get involved, and supporting imminent moves for new legislation being led by Wendy Morton MP: the Local Authority Roads (Wildlife Protection) Bill.

Dormouse Project, 1982-1994 and the first release of captive-bred dormice in the UK

A Talk by Dot Eaton to the Berkshire Mammal Group

3 March 2016

Over thirty years ago Dot was an animal keeper near Loch Lomond, when she formulated an ambition to build a captive-bred stock of British animals and reintroduce them to the countryside, but was warned there would be significant difficulties. Each animal would have to be vet-checked, landowners’ permission would be required, and some animals simply couldn’t be bred in captivity. However, she took heart from Gerald Durrell’s private assistant John Hartley and settled on dormice as her preferred species. At the time there was only one book on the subject, Common Dormouse by Elaine Hurrell, the daughter of Harry Hurrell. Eventually Owen Newman, a BBC cameraman, was recommended to her as someone with relevant expertise; someone who recently had even filmed a dormouse giving birth. It was Owen who trapped her first dormice at a location in Wiltshire, giving Dot three while retaining two for his own use. Dot had, by this time, qualified for a licence and Owen give her other dormice on subsequent occasions.

Dot’s first breeding colony

In 1982 she moved to Chessington Zoo and started breeding her first colony, and when she relocated to Windsor Safari Park in 1988 she moved her dormice with her. She had a small shed, divided into four and fitted with a central red light, but something larger scale was required and Dot designed a new breeding unit. The journal Robin Page visited and wrote a very supportive article in Country Life, helpfully ending with an appeal for funds. A cheque for £2,500 duly arrived from Mrs T. Hesketh of the Valerie White Trust, and the new building was erected. It had eight enclosures divided by Perspex to prevent the transmission of disease. In each enclosure was paced one male and one or two females – 16 animals in all – and Dot filled them with fresh branches twice a week: Hazel, honeysuckle and rosebay willowherb. She had red lights fitted to allow her to observe the dormice from a adjoining corridor and thus improve her understanding of their behaviour and ecology.

Observations of dormice

Their first reaction on Dot entering the enclosure was to freeze stock-still. They weren’t particularly sociable and didn’t feed together. Rather, if the encountered each other, the dominant individual would maintain its place and the other would run away (and surprisingly fast). Consequently Dot realised that food supplies had to be distributed widely throughout the breeding unit. Having said that, several dormice would share a nest box; perhaps three or four together. Sadly she never saw the process of nest building – presumably as they were inside the nest-boxes – but she did see dormice stripping branches in preparation and stuffing soft honeysuckle bark into their mouths before taking it to a box. There are several nest types: two or three-leaf nests made by juveniles; round nests full of bedding as breeding nests; and semi-subterranean grapefruit-sized nests in which to hibernate. The latter are at ground level and built partly into scrapes to achieve as stable a temperature in winter as possible. The adult dormice emerge in May in time to breed. They run and chase each other for three nights before finally mating. Then, if pregnant, the female will retire to a nest after 30 days to give birth. After a further 30 days the juveniles appear. (If not pregnant the chasing resumes after about 10 days, but most litters are early.) When the juveniles emerge it is fascinating to observe their varied personalities and the mistakes they make. They don’t know to freeze and they miss branches when climbing; Dot realised they are very vulnerable in the early days of life. Indeed if the temperature falls to blow 10 oC for several concurrent nights, then – assuming the juveniles are not fully developed – the mother will go torpid and the youngsters will die. As a result there may be second litters to replace the losses. In mid August the adults fatten up to hibernate; the youngsters take longer to prepare for the winter sleep.

The reintroduction team

Dot realised that a number of skills were necessary for success, many of which she personally didn’t have, and so assembled a team of experts to help.

• Martin Hicks

Ecologist in Hertfordshire

• Dr John Lewis

Vetinary surgeon

• Julian Ford-Robinson

Senior Science Master, Haileybury College

• Prof John Gurnell

Behaviourologist at QMC, London

• Steve Whitbread

Tracking specialist, Southampton University

• Dot Eaton

Dormouse breeder

IUNC Guidelines

These govern captive breeding for reintroduction projects worldwide and are founded on several fundamental principles:

• There should be evidence of former occurrence
• The causes of previous loss should be understood and a result of human action
• The factors causing extinction are to have been rectified
• The proposed habitat should be suitable and of sufficient extent

All of these were met at the proposed site at Haileybury in Hertfordshire, as though the site was small (7 hectares), two substantial hedgerows linked it to extensive woodland nearby.

1992: The Reintroduction

On 18 August the dormice were placed in a cage and observed until 23 September when the hatch was raised. One dormouse ventured out along a branch and returned. Within half an hour the colony had moved into the wild. There were two family groups: a male, two females and two young in one, and one female and five young in the other. One juvenile was radio tracked and was found to have ranged 35m and back. Three others ranged by a similar amount that first month. (Perhaps the rest did too, but only some individuals were monitored.) Five more juvenile males were added the following year, and more the year after.

Further observations

It was apparent that the dormice liked to explore and spent little time on the ground. Their squeaking is much like that of a mouse

1994: Burnham Beeches

In 1994 Windsor Safari Park went into receivership and despite efforts to sell it as a going concern, it was finally sold for development as the new Legoland. Employees, including Dot and her husband, were evicted from their tied cottages. As well as the loss of her home, Dot had 97 animals to care for. Initially the dormice were taken to St Tiggywinkle’s, and then to Burnham Beeches were they and the breeding unit were offered a home by Mark Frater and Helen Reed, the keeper and ecologist there. Indeed, as well as feeding and looking after the dormice, Mark and Helen even built a second breeding unit. Eventually Dot arranged for a contract to assign ownership jointly with the Corporation of London (owner of Burnham Beeches). With others expressing an interest in the project, a Common Dormouse Captive Breeders’ Group was formed and continues to function to this day. Since 2000 the reintroduction programme has been administered by the People’s Trust for Endangered Species, which has now run as many as 25 such projects (involving partners such as London and Paignton zoos). Meanwhile Dot has been invited to speak at international conferences in Denmark and the USA, though without her own facilities, she is no longer been active in breeding dormice.

QUESTIONS & DISCUSSION

To which Martin Hicks, present in the audience, contributed.

Taxonomy – dormice are a group of their own, with two species in the UK: Common and Edible.

Breeding – litters of 2-6 juveniles. They remain in family groups for a while, both parents looking after the youngsters. Pairings are temporary, however, as dormice are quite promiscuous.

Physical characteristics – include a semi-prehensile tail and forward facing eyes

Behaviour – they are arboreal and nocturnal, but particularly active at dusk and dawn. They hibernate throughout the long winter months, though in Mediterranean countries the higher temperatures require much less hibernation. When torpid or hibernating, they are vulnerable to ground predators, such as badgers and wild boar, though dense vegetation protects them from the attention of owls. Their food supply, however, is adversely affected by the presence of the more vigorous grey squirrel.

Habitat – not just coppiced hazel, although that is most characteristic and 2-3 year old coppice is ideal, they will even be found at the edge of pine forests and where there is dense vegetation. However, it is habitat loss that has been the biggest cause of their decline; the loss of managed woods with lots of new growth, and the ripping out of hedges has isolated and exposed them. There has been massive change in the British countryside over the past century.

Edwin A.R. Trout

Berkshire Mammal Group

November 2015 Mammal of the Month - The Fallow Deer

It's November already! Time to say goodbye to the hedgehog and welcome the fallow deer as our November Mammal of the Month.

Our top five facts for this species are:

• They were introduced to the UK by the Normans - they originally come from south-west Asia - and are now the most common deer in the UK.

• They are in between roe deer and red deer in size and have spotty coats and a white bottom edged with black stripes.

• The rutting season is October and November so keep an ear out if you're out and about in the woods this month.

• Females can live up to 16 years in the wild.

• Nearly 2/3 of their diet is grass but they will also browse young trees and eat acorns, beech mast and chestnuts in the autumn.

Please record your sightings at BMG Recording

If you'd like to find out more about this species check out the Mammal Society's fact sheet at: Fallow Deer

August 2015 Mammal of the Month - The Mole

Photo Credit: Mike E Talbot (via Wikicommons)

Time to announce our August Mammal of the Month! This month it's the mole. This species is one of the hardest British mammals to spot but you may well see signs of it. Here are our top five mole facts for you:

1. Moles eat over half their body weight in earthworms every day!
2. Their deeper tunnels may be used by several generations of moles
3. Their tunnel networks can be several hundreds of metres long
4. There are no moles in Ireland
5. Moles sometimes keep their prey alive in underground chambers instead of eating it straight away. 

Find out more details with the Mammal Society's fact sheet

And finally, last but most certainly not least, please don't forget to record your sightings of moles or any signs of them (mole hills count!) at our recording page.

June 2015 Mammal of the Month - The Grey Squirrel

Photo Credit - Becky Thomas

Somehow we’ve reached June already so it’s time for a new mammal of the month for you all to spot in the long evenings. This month it’s the grey squirrel. Not everyone's favourite squirrel in the UK but in suburban and urban areas probably the wild mammal that you'll most often see.

Our top five grey squirrel facts are:

1. They originally come from the USA and were introduced into the UK over many years from the 1870s through to the late 1920s.
2. Their tails can be as long as the rest of their bodies (tails up to 24 cm, body length 24-28.5 cm)
3. Their nests are called dreys and they often use twigs that they cut straight from the tree with leaves still on (birds use dead twigs).
4. Females can have two litters a year, in spring and again in the summer, with 3 or 4 young in each litter.
5. As they are not a native species and are often considered a pest it is illegal to release one back into the wild in the UK without a special exemption certificate (some wildlife rehabilitation centres have these).

 Find out more with the national Mammal Society’s fact sheet for the species 
.

Photo Credit - Damian Carter

Please record all of your grey squirrel sightings for us at our recording page – we have surprisingly few squirrel records considering how many are around. Don’t forget that we also welcome records of all wild mammals all year round so please don’t restrict yourselves to the Mammal of the Month!

March 2015 Mammal of the Month - The Brown Hare

Our mammal of the month for March, is the 'Mad March' hare. Brown hares are present across most of the country in lowland areas and our records for Berkshire are all in the west of the county to date (west of Bradfield) so it would be great to get some from elsewhere - see if you can spot this speedy character when walking on farm or grassland. Please record any sightings for us here.

 

Our top five hare facts are:

 

* They can run fast - up to 45 miles per hour!

 

* They have longer ears than rabbits, with black tips

 

* Unlike rabbits, they don't burrow. Instead they make small depressions called forms.

 

* Young hares are called leverets

 

* Females can have up to four litters every year.

 

The Mammal Society factsheet has more details:

Tracking the Fox

Photo Credit: Becky Thomas

It had been a mild winter – no sledging and snowmen before Christmas as we had in 2010 and 11 – but at the end of January came what the media called “the Beast from the East”. Cold air swept in from the Continent, chivvying flocks of redwings before it, and hail pelted down in a furious, but mercifully brief burst on the 29th. Then on Saturday 31st, I awoke to find the landscape covered in a velvety coating of snow. It wasn’t yet 7.00 in the morning, so the scene looked calm and peaceful in the lamplight; there was only one set of tyre tracks in the road out front. I thought I’d go for a walk in the first snow of the year and enjoy the frozen serenity of Maiden Erlegh Nature Reserve before anyone else was up.







Wrapped up in hat, scarf and gloves I set out, my Wellingtons pressing on the virgin snow. Only it wasn’t virgin – someone, or something, had been here before. There was a set of paw prints stretching down the pavement towards the lake. Instinctively I followed them, wondering what they were: cat? (wrong shape); dog? (too big) – surely fox! They crossed the road and proscribed a circle on a neighbour’s lawn, then on to the grass in Lakeside and along the path. Approaching the gate I saw them divert across the sward and out onto the road. One set of tracks led out to the houses in Lakeside, and another came back. I followed them along the path to the weir and the foot of the lake. They diverged: one into the woods, and the other on to the fishing platform. They were definitely fox tracks, dainty, forward facing and – vitally – unaccompanied. Prints were to be found on the path leading to the playground, and though I lost sight of them in Laurel park and around the pavilion, I found them again passing the Interpretation Centre and onto Instow Road. This was too easy, the fox was following one of the routes I take of an evening! The trail went cold in the meadow – disappointingly, as that is where a den can usually be found in the summer – but was picked up again as I rounded the sediment pond at the Beech Lane end. The tracks crossed the road and along the footpath for a while, before cutting through a gap and up Allendale Road.

"Caminozorro" by Erfil - Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caminozorro.JPG#mediaviewer/File:Caminozorro.JPG

One, or possibly two foxes between them had taken the same circuit as I often do, before daybreak prompted them to seek cover. But then I’ve also seen them on summer evenings in the past, openly trotting along the paths a dusk. But now, when sightings of foxes are rare (compared with a couple of years ago), these tracks came as a pleasing reassurance of their continuing presence.

Edwin A.R. Trout

Dormouse Box Check and Clean

Moor Copse Dormouse Box: Check and Clean – 18^th and 24^th January 2015

Damian Carter (BMG Treasurer)

It was time for the dormouse boxes at Moor Copse nature reserve to be checked, cleaned and, in some cases, simply located. This being the first time I’d ever done this properly, I was expecting a pleasant walk through the nature reserve, clean out a few boxes and then wander home after a good bit of fresh air. Well I was mostly right.

 

The small group of us set out with bags of spare boxes, wire, cutters, “stuffers” Amanda provided us with, a couple of ‘outdoor’ marker pens and Liz with a map marking where all the boxes where. The idea being simply to clean out the boxes, while the dormice are hibernating at ground level, re-mark the fading numbers and replace any that were broken, or missing, and remount any that needed it.

 

Wandering through a wood looking for wood-en boxes, even with a marked up map, isn’t quite as easy as it sounds, especially when you have to remember to look behind you sometimes to see the ones that you’ve just walked right past! Sharp eyes and a good sense of direction come in very handy.

So, approaching the first box I find out what the “stuffers” are for: sticking in the hole to stop any residents from escaping before we’ve had a chance to properly read them their rights and evict them! After all these are dormice boxes, not wood mice, yellow-necked mice or pygmy shrew boxes, but I guess they can read the signs!

Yellow-necked Mouse

I was actually quite surprised at just how many of the boxes were in fact occupied. We took pity on the couple of wood mice families we found which still had large numbers of young in residence.

Pygmy Shrew

Wood Mouse

We had a complete range of box contents from old mice’ nests, filled with chewed nuts; birds’ nests; an incredibly tough, sticky and elastic hive-like nest (jury still out on what these were, caterpillar, bees nest?); through to completely empty – not even a leaf!

I managed to get a few photos but sadly, like so many others, my camera skills need improving so many came out complete blurs but here’s a few of the others. If anyone can identify what creature was responsible for the droppings in one of these it’d be interesting to know.

Berkshire Mammals Group AGM and Wildlife Crime Talk

NEXT INDOOR MEETING and AGM

Our next indoor meeting is the Annual General Meeting at 7pm on Thursday 26th February followed by a talk given by PC Ian Whitlock who will speak to us about his work as a Wildlife Crime Officer.

Ian has been a Wildlife Crime Office for over two years and specialises in CITES (the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora) and exotic animals.  He has run a number of investigations including taxidermy cases, bat roosts and puppy farming, and securing the first ever CITES prosecution for Thames Valley Police.  He aims to provide an overview of wildlife crime and the work in which he is involved, with examples drawn from experience and emphasizing mammal cases.

Talks are £4 for non-members and free to BMG members (why not join on the night? see Membership for more details). The University of Reading is kindly sponsoring this event by providing a venue and free admission to any current University of Reading students.

 The talk will be held in Room G74 in the Philip Lyle Building (near the Harris Garden) on Whiteknights Campus, University of Reading. The 20 and 21 buses both serve the Pepper Lane bus stop just outside the campus entrance (the stop after the main university one if coming from Reading town centre). Free parking is available in front of the adjacent Harborne Building in Car Park 13. Please use the Pepper Lane entrance to the university, turn right at the roundabout and then follow the road around until you reach the building, which will be on your right. For further details please consult the campus map, available here.

 The door to the building will be locked from 7pm onwards, so please try to arrive in good time (anyone arriving after 7pm will have to call a mobile number left on the door to be let in).

 As part of the AGM we will vote in the committee positions for another year. We currently have two vacant positions:

 1) Surveys Officer: To co-ordinate and organise species surveys and to maintain records submitted to the group

 2) Secretary: To take minutes during committee meetings and to oversee the general emails

If you are interested in either of these positions, then please get in touch at berksmammals@gmail.com