Introduced and pest animals

I'm James Stevens.

I work for Primary Industries and Regions in the Biosecurity Division.

I'm the Wild Dog Project coordinator and that project is the Predator Control and Livestock Productivity Project.

So we're over in the general Ngarkat area.

The main purpose of today is to set up some control-specific predator cameras.

So we're not just looking at monitoring, we're actually looking at how we can use cameras to determine how we're going to control predators, which is something that I think is missing from a lot of other informational videos on the topic – you end up with detection only.

They are called a camera trap and when you set a trap, you're not only thinking about how to capture that animal but also what you've got to do with that information at the other end. So by setting up a camera, you've got to think about why you're setting it up and what you're going to do with that information.

So if you're looking at shooting, you need to set that up and know what time that animal is going to be in your control lane. So whether that be on a gatepost like behind me, or one of the other setups that we've done today.

If you're looking at trapping, then you need to pick your prominent location on that intersection and point the camera at that, so that you know what that animal's doing as it comes through.

Tracks on the ground will tell you whether or not you've got an animal; and the camera can tell you when and how and why you can control it.

Today we'll just set them up for 48 hours. I generally recommend seven to 10 days, and then if you haven't got anything on it after seven to 10 days, then look at shifting it to a new location.

This is a pretty short and fast, but definitely expecting to get some foxes at the minimum.

We've seen plenty of good activity around today, there's heaps of tracks so yeah, should see something happen.

So we picked this location. It's a pretty good natural funnel coming straight down through, and we've got a really nice game trail just over here coming down behind us there. Anything that wants to come through here, it's going to come through that game trail,

I set my cameras up a little bit differently – I like to have them out of eyeshot from at least one direction so we're going to go in next to the strainer post here. The game trail comes in –probably at about, we'll call it 25-30 degree angle so we'll get plenty of time of that animal moving through our shot. Then we're also going to be potentially looking at doing some trapping here later on so we're going to watch which one of these bushes that the foxes or dog that comes through is going to mark on.

We've got these real flash looking camera mounts for the day, but you can always just use the strap that comes with the camera and go straight onto the post there as well. This one's just giving me a bit more angle.

So this one's a S-Promise 6-88. It's a heck of a good camera, it normally runs on 4G as well but we're not going to use that today, got absolutely no mobile reception down in this gully.

But got it set on 30 second video on single photo. I always like, if I'm ever taking videos, I like to have it take a photo as well because that way you can flick through and look at the photo, which tells you what's in the video.

It's also got a forward-facing screen, they call it a selfie screen so that you don't have to set the camera up, take a photo, reopen the camera and adjust – you can do it all as you're setting it up.

We'll get it hooked up, we've got full adjustment here. On that selfie screen I can make sure it's covering exactly what I want it to, which is that trail coming through. It's just a matter of arming the camera, and then I do always like to make sure I trigger them, because at least that way I know that it was working when I was here. So once our light stop flashing up the top there, that'll be about right I reckon.

We're on a much bigger intersection here, but there's plenty of fox tracks running around the front here. So I don't want to go too far back and I don't want to go too high because I still want to pick them up. But I also want plenty of light, because the biggest restricting factor is the predators are going to be here at night time. So what you really want is the infrared flash to cover as much area as possible.

The passive infrared sensor is generally pretty good, so you got to make sure that you can actually see them at night time so I'm going to leave it pretty much right at the top of the picket. I haven't got that picket in super far, but they're probably only going to be here for a couple of nights anyway.

This is another scenario. Over on the other one, we were probably looking at putting a trap in. But this here would be sort of a baiting or shooting camera, trying to figure out what's here, when it's here, and where it is in relation to the intersection.

Our night time wind direction is generally from the southeast, which is that way-ish, so we've set up on this side so we can see what those animals are doing on that win direction side. That'll help inform where we're going to put the bait and if we're just looking to shoot, it'll let us know what time we need to be out here.

Whereas that other one, it's a better setup for a trap – plenty of tussocks and that sort of thing that I reckon the foxes are marking on.

We'll see what we get over the next couple of days.

You can see here we've got some really good footage of this fox. We set this camera up to cover the two tussocks – the one in the foreground and the one in the central background.

The reason being, we're expecting foxes to territory-mark on one of those and as we watch that fox, the wind is coming almost directly into the camera from the southeasterly direction. We can see that fox cross the wind, pick up the scent, and then move over and mark on the tussock.

So that's really good to inform our control. We can then lay a bait around that tussock and or put a trap in there, and we would have that fox relatively quickly.

It just really highlights the importance of setting a camera up with the intention of control so that you can actually see what that animal's doing.

Video is also really handy over just a picture – a picture will tell you presence or absence. A  short video like this one will actually inform how and where to conduct your control.

On the second camera we had set up, we've had a feral cat come in. Much the same, the focus of the camera was that large, highlighted grass tussock in the background. Again, we're expecting a territory mark on that. The cat has picked up some scent on that tussock, come in, investigated and then marked on that tussock.

So not only does it work for wild dogs and foxes, but it's a useful tool for feral cats is identifying those prominent landscape features, monitoring those, and then using the camera footage to inform control.