Stoat Snippet 116

First things first, we should probably address the elephant in the room. It’s been quite some time since we last checked in here, so apologies for the lateness of this snippet! Still, better late than never. We've been undergoing a little bit of a reshuffle here at the ONWP, and one of these changes is the arrival of a new Communications Officer. The Comms Officer is responsible for keeping things up to date around here, and the process of getting his feet under the table has meant that he is only now getting around to updating this blog. Going forward, he will diligently maintain a regular flow of snippets.

Second things second, it's time to stop talking in the third person. So, hello! It is I, the new Communications Officer! My name is Adam, and, while it feels slightly strange to introduce myself like this, there isn’t anyone else to do it for me. I’ve come to Orkney and the ONWP from Brighton, where I was working as a freelance journalist. I’ve always had a love of islands, both for their wildlife and strength of community. I’m really enjoying life in Orkney, where both are so evident.

I am certainly not the only project-wide news that you need catching up on, however. In April, we had visitors from LIFE Raft, a project in Rathlin island, Northern Ireland. Rathlin is home to important populations of eider ducks, puffins, and corncrakes, as well as migratory Manx shearwater. Unfortunately, Rathlin, like Orkney, has a home invader. Ferrets and rats were brought to Rathlin by humans, and like stoats here in Orkney, pose a serious threat to native species on the island.

LIFE Raft has been set up with the aim of restoring Rathlin to the safe haven that it once was. Mike and Dave spent several days in Orkney with us, sharing about their project, and learning about ours.

It was fascinating to hear about their plans, and a real reminder that invasive species eradication is a global necessity. We look forward to working closely with LIFE Raft as both of our projects progress and evolve.

As Orkney makes its haphazard way towards spring, our wildlife monitoring team becomes increasingly busy. As the purpose of eradicating stoats from Orkney is to protect native wildlife, it is essential that we understand population patterns in key species. This helps us to determine both the impact and benefits of removing stoats for wildlife in Orkney. This spring, the team have been focusing on waders like lapwing, curlew, and oystercatcher, as well as Orkney voles.

This job is simply too big for one person, so our Monitoring Officer is being helped by a small team of volunteers. This includes two Residential Volunteers - both in Orkney for the first time - Mike and Sandy, our veteran bird spotting volunteers, and Leah, who is doing a PhD on predator-prey relations. This little crew is responsible for monitoring at sites across not just the Orkney Mainland, but the North Isles as well.

All in all, it’s been a slow start to the nesting season, but eggs are gradually starting to appear! Over Easter, the first lapwing eggs were discovered, and at the start of May, the team found the first curlew nest of the season. Despite the slow start generally, this is early for curlew, which will nest through until July. Of course, all monitoring is done under licence. Last spring saw the team report record numbers of wader nests (since the start of the project in 2019). Oystercatcher nests, in particular, had a very high success rate. We’re hoping for another good year here in Orkney, so stay tuned for updates!

Comms is not the only place where changes are afoot, and there are a couple of new faces among our trappers, (as well as an old-new one). Two wonderful new editions to the team arrived in February and March; David and Hylton, while Cat transitioned from being a residential volunteer to a fully-fledged trapper! Welcome, welcome, welcome (back).

In other eradication news, we’ve begun deploying a limited number of Mostela camera stations. These look similar to our lethal traps, but are painted green and set with cameras. Unlike regular trail cameras, these cut down on the amount of time spent looking through photos triggered by movement caused by wind, traffic, or livestock. Their purpose is to assess whether there are stoats present in areas where we’re removing very few stoats. This is exciting, as it has not been trialled before by a stoat eradication project.

We’ve also arrived at that time in the year when we update everyone on our trapping statistics. This will cover the period from October through to the end of April. We continue to respond to sightings in Deerness, as well as South Ronaldsay and the Linked Isles, and your sightings from all over Orkney remain essential as we progress with the eradication. Detailed stoat sightings are like gold dust for our trappers. A stoat’s direction of travel, size and behaviour is all valuable information, and videos are prized above all else. A specific location also increases the accuracy and speed with which our trappers can remove a stoat. If you have the what3words app, you can use this to provide coordinates to within 3 metres of your sighting. Once within an area this small, our conservation dogs can do the rest.

Since the project became fully operational in 2019, we have now removed 4,400 stoats across Orkney. This is an increase of almost 900 on the last trapping report, and represents a significant achievement ahead of the stoat breeding season.

* Many trap boxes contain two traps.

** The stoats are killed using a type of lethal, humane trap – the DOC 200 – which is approved by the Spring Trap Approval Order for Scotland and the UK and meets the welfare standards defined by the Agreement on International Humane Trapping Standards (AIHTS).

*** Total statistics start date from 1 August 2019.

The decision to put wire ties on the entrances to our trap boxes has greatly reduced the numbers of other animals being caught. However, there are occasions when some animals still find their way in. These incidents remain incredibly rare in the context of the large number of traps and trap checks. Nor will these isolated incidents have a significant impact on the overall populations of this other wildlife compared to the impact of stoats on our native wildlife. The only species which we cannot prevent from regularly entering the trap boxes and activating the traps are brown rats. This is because of their size, weight, and diet, which are similar to a stoat.

Since October through to the end of April we have caught 4,760 rats, 139 rabbits, 62 mice, 35 starlings, 22 voles, 3 frogs and 3 hedgehogs. While we regret any kind of bycatch, an adult stoat must eat the equivalent of one Orkney vole every day just to maintain its body weight. As such, a small amount of bycatch unfortunately has to be tolerated if we are to protect the populations as a whole.

Unfortunately, we are sorry to say that two small feral kittens have also been killed. After finding the first kitten, which had been able to access the trap due to a missing wire tie, we took measures to check all of the 7,090 active trap boxes in our network as quickly as possible, to make sure they had wire ties that were in correct working order. We cannot say with certainty whether the wire tie had never been attached or whether it was somehow dislodged. During the process of checking the trap entrances, another feral kitten was discovered in a trap which was also missing its wire tie.

In both instances, the kittens were scanned for microchips, and none were found. Based on their size, they were aged as between 8-12 weeks, which is too young for a domestic kitten to be outside of the house. We appreciate that this will be very upsetting for some people, and are ourselves both frustrated and saddened by these events.

With 12,317 trap entrances now checked for secure wire ties; we can confirm that less than 1% of trap entrances were missing a wire tie. Those have now been fixed, and we can only apologise and assure people that we have taken stringent measures to ensure that this does not happen again anywhere in our network. To this date, we have still never found a cat in a trap which had a wire tie on it, and we are deeply disappointed that a very small number of traps were active without the box entrances having a working wire tie.

The ONWP was represented at the Biosecurity for LIFE conference in Edinburgh. Biosecurity Officer Chris Bell gave a presentation on our work here in Orkney, and was supported by Douggie Beaumont, our Assistant Biosecurity Officer.

Biosecurity for LIFE has designated 41 ‘Island Special Protection Areas’ for breeding seabirds, with the aim of protecting them from invasive non-native predators. Chris said that, “their end of project conference in Edinburgh was a brilliant way to celebrate that success, and for many engaged in this important work to gather from islands across Britain and Northern Ireland to meet and share experiences”.

Six of these special islands are here in Orkney, and Chris, Douggie, and the biosecurity team are on the frontline of the struggle to keep them free from invasive stoats. This means monitoring the islands and responding to possible sightings, but the best way to prevent incursions on the currently stoat free islands is by removing them from the Orkney Mainland and Linked Isles.

Biosecurity trapping requires a strange kind of mental resilience, as you hope to find nothing in the traps that you set. Luckily, staying positive through months and years of empty trap checks is Douggie’s forte, thanks to what Chris calls his “special gift for self-motivation”. Empty traps in Hoy and the Inner North Isles are symbolic of a successful biosecurity strategy.

The first island biosecurity hub has now been set up on Shapinsay. This will provide residents with the tools that they need to deal with a possible stoat incursion in the future. Chris and Douggie also ran a workshop to develop biosecurity skills and awareness on the island.

We’ll end with some comings and goings from the biosecurity team. Since the start of the year, 18-month-old Sky (a springer spaniel) has had her nose to the ground across the Orkney Mainland. Although she only joined the team in September, Sky has already shown a real knack for detecting stoat ‘scat’, otherwise known as poo.

Now that Sky has graduated stoat-scat-detection school, she joins Scout, Thorn, and Riggs, all of whom also came to us from Kryus. When the detection dogs signal that they have found scat, tracker dogs are brought in to pinpoint the search. This helps our trappers - who are people, not dogs – to target an area and humanely remove the stoats that have invaded it.

And finally, one of the project’s first and most experienced dog handlers will be leaving the ONWP. Grant has played a crucial part in the development of Europe’s first stoat-detection dog team, and his knowledge and research has been invaluable. From everyone at the ONWP, we wish him the best of luck in what comes next!