Cost-Effective Large-Scale Occupancy-Abundance Monitoring of Invasive Brushtail Possums (Trichosurus Vulpecula) on New Zealand's Public Conservation Land.

ABSTRACT: There is interest in large-scale and unbiased monitoring of biodiversity status and trend, but there are few published examples of such monitoring being implemented. The New Zealand Department of Conservation is implementing a monitoring program that involves sampling selected biota at the vertices of an 8-km grid superimposed over the 8.6 million hectares of public conservation land that it manages. The introduced brushtail possum (Trichosurus Vulpecula) is a major threat to some biota and is one taxon that they wish to monitor and report on. A pilot study revealed that the traditional method of monitoring possums using leg-hold traps set for two nights, termed the Trap Catch Index, was a constraint on the cost and logistical feasibility of the monitoring program. A phased implementation

SUBMITTER: Gormley AM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4452217 | biostudies-literature | 2015

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature