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| St Bees Island. Photo by Malcolm Ludgate |
This goal meant that:
1. Koalas had to be located at night (when they're more active).
2. They had to be identified (either by existing tags - or caught and tagged)
3. They had to be bellowing!
Not easy ...
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| Bill and Sean, getting ready to head out. Photo by Malcolm Ludgate |
If you've ever been a part of fieldwork, you'll know a lot of the success of the work relies on the ability of the researcher to troubleshoot. If Plan A doesn't work, you need to be able to quickly implement Plan B (or C or D or ... you get the point). Otherwise, you lose precious time - which is expensive, when you're including travel and salaries - and data.
So Bill and Sean and a few collaborators (who we'll talk about in another post) initially tried to record bellowing of koalas with GPS collars. This made it easy for them to find known individuals - but sitting down with a recorder waiting for the koala to bellow proved to be a waste of time. The marked koalas weren't interested in bellowing at the right times!
Plan B was implemented, with greater success. The team walked through the forest at night (with lights) and listened for bellowing calls. When they heard one, they stealthily moved closer to record the call. Then they used their lights to establish whether the koala was a marked one, and if there were other individuals (male or female) in the immediate area. If the koala wasn't marked, they had to catch it! But they managed to obtain a handful of calls from known individuals this way ... and sorted out a good method for obtaining calls next time.
This Island Experience was more nocturnal than usual ... the team worked from the afternoon through till 11pm, or (if they went home for dinner) 2am. It involved trekking along steep hillsides in the dark - with a small torch (flashlight) for illumination. And things didn't work to plan.
(Do they ever?)
But that's field ecology! And our Koala Ecology team loves a good challenge. So they loved it.
Written by Amanda @ Koala Ecology Group
