Autumn field work

April 27th, 2021

The team completed their quarterly field sampling last week with the support of ACT Parks rangers. 

The team completed their quarterly field sampling last week with the support of ACT Parks rangers.

 

Three people walking through grasslands with old cattle yards and mountains in the background

Autumn sampling at a long term field monitoring site

 

A glorious but cold evening. The grass is still quite long following the rains in early 2021, which makes it hard to spot the rabbits. Rabbit numbers remain very low (only 1 rabbit all night!), similar to the numbers seen over the Summer 2021 and Spring 2020 monitoring nights. A brilliant example of what sustained long-term integrated rabbit control can achieve.

This long-term field monitoring is important to look at trends in rabbit populations over time and to determine which caliciviruses have been through this population and when. Here is some of the previous work that this monitoring site has supported: