Conservation Volunteers of St.Mellons & Trowbridge
Wildlife Monitoring
Why is wildlife monitoring important ?
Tracking patterns, such as an increase or decrease in different plant or animal groups over a period is is a great way of monitoring the health of the local ecosystem.
This can be particularly important when there are local changes, such as new building developments, or when the Park Rangers team introduce a new management plan for our green spaces. Information from monitoring wildlife will help us understand if these changes have a positive or negative impact.
Shrill carder bee - one of the rarest bumblebees in England and Wales
What we do . . . .
Wildlife monitoring programmes help gather data on a variety of species and habitats. As volunteers we receive training in ecological monitoring techniques, taking part in important short and long term projects that survey rare and threatened species.
Working in groups we record data and relay it to the Park Rangers team , this helps them review and adapt the conservation management plans. Monitoring is seasonal due to the natural cycles of wildlife, the main survey season runs from May to September/October, with only a few exceptions in late winter.
Hazel dormouse - rare and protected .
Dormouse Survey Workshop
Hendre Lake Wed 22nd May 2024 9.30am-12.00pm
During the dormouse workshop volunteers learnt how to survey and monitor for dormouse footprints. This in-person experience taught volunteers how to identify the habitats of dormice and the signs of dormouse activity. During the workshop they set up 20 tunnels with the Wildlife Trust expert for the 3 month survey which took place over the summer of 2024 and the volunteers were invited to help collect the data. These results feed back into important data collection for an endangered species.
Some of the volunteers who did the dormice tunnel workshop at Hendre Lake returned every two weeks for the survey period to remove the papers and put new paper and ink in all 20 tunnels.
The papers removed from the tunnels were analysed and those of interest placed in a folder with a record of date and tunnel number to show the distribution of Dormice.
FEEDBACK . . . .
Alex Wildlife Trust
When asked if the pic was dormice footprints - "I'd say so! Congrats!! 😁 "
Emma Local Nature Partnership
"Footprints are undeniably all dormouse it's really exciting stuff well done everyone!"
Rhodri (Park Ranger)
"Superb news! Well done guys. By far the most successful monitoring scheme in Cardiff at the moment"
Dormouse footprints Hendre Lake Site