BRAG - Bandicoot Action Recovery Group - Thursday 12th July 2018

We attended the first action of the BRAG at Deep Creek with Kate, who was staying from ACT.

I had seen the Ad on Facebook and we were interested.

We learned a bit about bandicoots and their habitat from Alisa and then went our in two groups (we were with Luke) to set up two cameras to monitor for bandicoots. 

It is a fairly complicated process, so it was good to have a group to learn in. 

This initial project is aimed at helping the Department for Environment & Water's Fire Management team to improve their understanding of the distribution of the Southern Brown Bandicoot in parks where prescribed burns are planned and reduce the threat that bushfires present to them. 

Improving knowledge about where bandicoots occur helps ensure that only small proportions of bandicoot habitat are burnt at any one time. It can also be used to help understand the habitat requirements of bandicoots and how quickly this habitat responds to fire.

 The Fire Ecology team and the Region’s Threatened Fauna Ecologist have undertaken some monitoring in the Adelaide Hills to answer these questions but more survey work is needed to ensure they are managing bandicoot habitat the best way that they can.

Luke was very complimentary about the work of our orienteering friend Dr Steve Cooper with bandicoots. 

Beautiful Deep Creek forest walk

Here we are on the edge of the group learning about where to place a camera before heading into the bush. Photo from facebook site

The stringybark forest where we set up the cameras.  Pretty good ground cover for the bandicoots.
Photo from facebook site

Kate holding the tiger ties and camera at the ready. Luke is holding out the tea strainer used to hold peanut butter as bait

Luke giving the lesson on installing the cameras.
See the yellow foam to check the field of the photo and the vertical tea strainer full of peanut butter behind it. 

Now it is our turn- Trev takes the notes

checking the set up of the camera.

We hope to stay involved in this project- which will involve travelling back to Deep Creek and collecting the data from the cards, possibly moving the cameras to different locations and identifying what has been caught on camera.