 |
| Now they are the second rarest carnivores in Britain, and these adorable creatures only survive in small populations within Wales, Shropshire, North Yorkshire and Scotland. With a Population estimated at 3,500 according to Peoples Trust for Endangered Species! However they are found around Europe facing similar issues. |
My Fellow Practical Conservationists and I travelled to Dalby Forest; where we volunteered our time setting up camera traps and looking at 100's of photos and videos hunting for Pine Martens.
Dalby Forest is home to the Yorkshire Pine Marten Support Programme ran by NatureSpy; which is a non-profit organisation, who relies on YOU, the UK's best citizen scientists to help them with projects. They aim to support existing populations of Pine Martens and develop a long-term conservation plan.
Pine martens are the size of a cat, which is chestnut brown with large rounded ears with pale fur tips and a creamy yellow or orange chest and throat patch, and they have a long bushy tail.
 |
| Top image is a Pine Marten proudly showing off its catch, which can clearly be identified by its yellow bib Pine Martens are vital to the food web,if a prey species has a population boom, then they adjust there diet to eat more of them, The bottom image shows two maps, 1. shows the Red Squirrels in the UK, and 2. shows the Pine martens in the UK, these two maps are very similar, with our help they could look the same. Top image Credit to Woodland Trust © Bottom image Credit to Vincent Wildlife Trust © |
Why should we care?
Good question! Ultimately humanity is the reason that these animals were facing near extinction, through forest destruction for buildings and roads, hunting for their fur and accidental poisoning meant for foxes and crows. We owe them, as well as ourselves to save them because of this they are now protected by the Wildlife and Countryside Act.
Studies have reported that pine martens are helping fight back the grey squirrels allowing for the native Red Squirrel to make a comeback. Pine Martens have been seen preying on grey squirrels. This means that locally and nationally these red squirrels could make a comeback.
By helping the Pine Martens grow, there is the possibility that these isolated populations could with a little help from us, merge together allowing for larger populated areas in British woodland.
How did we help?
We learnt how to set up camera traps and it isn't as easy as picking a tree and sticking a camera to it, there are many things to consider! Whether the sun is going to hit the camera, whether it's going to be disturbed by people etc...
Good question! Ultimately humanity is the reason that these animals were facing near extinction, through forest destruction for buildings and roads, hunting for their fur and accidental poisoning meant for foxes and crows. We owe them, as well as ourselves to save them because of this they are now protected by the Wildlife and Countryside Act.
Studies have reported that pine martens are helping fight back the grey squirrels allowing for the native Red Squirrel to make a comeback. Pine Martens have been seen preying on grey squirrels. This means that locally and nationally these red squirrels could make a comeback.
By helping the Pine Martens grow, there is the possibility that these isolated populations could with a little help from us, merge together allowing for larger populated areas in British woodland.
Video credit to Wildwood Trust 2016 ©
We learnt how to set up camera traps and it isn't as easy as picking a tree and sticking a camera to it, there are many things to consider! Whether the sun is going to hit the camera, whether it's going to be disturbed by people etc...
Hunting for pine martens is a lot harder than it sounds, due to their elusive nature, they hide high in the trees but can be tempted down by smelly peanut butter and honey as bait giving the best possible chance to snap a pine marten!
 |
1. Get your camera! this one is a browning, 2. Find the area that you want to camera trap,
3. Go off track exploring to find the perfect area, preferably with a tree stump that you can bait.
that has a clear animal trail going through it, 4. Set up your camera making sure that it is tilted the
correct way to be able to get the tree stump so it capture any animals that are there.
To learn more on camera trapping click here!
|
The second half of the day was spent looking at images and videos that had be captured by cameras, this was really interesting! As the cameras are really well hidden there's no possibility of the animals getting camera shy!
Plenty of Roe Deer, Grey squirrels and Stoats were seen, but no Pine Marten.
Camera trapping is effective as a long-term survey of animals. However, is costly to start up and maintain, and having to go through each image individually would be time consuming luckily there is an army of able body citizen scientists (Like you!) willing to look at images of animals to identify them.
 |
| A Camera trap within Dalby Forest snapped this curious Roe Deer grazing away on the 14/07/2018 at 01.45pm (The camera is American and so is the date displayed on the camera) Credit: NatureSpy 2018 © |
How to get involved?
How involved you get is down to you! It really depends on how much time and money you want to put into it. You can help spread awareness by following them on social media; Facebook and Twitter.
NatureSpy also run courses that you can take part in, there
is 2 courses online, and an accredited Camera Trapping course which when you start you get a free camera!
(find out more here).
These all cost a bit of money, so if the you can’t afford that then don’t worry! You can volunteer in other ways.
To be able to volunteer with NatureSpy you have to have a good knowledge of British wildlife, a good level of physical fitness as you will be spending a lot of time off-path hiking to set camera traps for possibly 3-10 miles a day. You can volunteer by downloading the application and emailing it to NatureSpy which can be found here.
These all cost a bit of money, so if the you can’t afford that then don’t worry! You can volunteer in other ways.
To be able to volunteer with NatureSpy you have to have a good knowledge of British wildlife, a good level of physical fitness as you will be spending a lot of time off-path hiking to set camera traps for possibly 3-10 miles a day. You can volunteer by downloading the application and emailing it to NatureSpy which can be found here.
 |
| MammalWeb hosts the images captured by NatureSpy from the North York Moors, The graph shows all the hard work you citizen scientists have done in 6 months and how many species have been identified! Its really easy to get involved! just keep reading... Image Credit: MammalWeb © and NatureSpy© edit created by myself. |
Or... you can always spend your evenings
at home, watching some TV and identifying animals by images/videos that are
uploaded from camera traps all over the world; MammalWeb for UK based traps and
Zooniverse for global traps.
Thanks for reading,
C.
De Bondi, N., White, J.G., Stevens, M. and Cooke, R., 2010. A comparison of the effectiveness of camera trapping and live trapping for sampling terrestrial small-mammal communities. Wildlife Research, 37(6), pp.456-465.
Sheehy, E., Sutherland, C., O'Reilly, C. and Lambin, X., 2018. The enemy of my enemy is my friend: native pine marten recovery reverses the decline of the red squirrel by suppressing grey squirrel populations. Proc. R. Soc. B, 285(1874), p.20172603.
http://www.mammalweb.org/?view=projecthome&option=com_biodiv&project_id=17
*All images are taken by myself unless otherwise stated*
*Quote image created on Adobe Spark.*
