Innovative mammal conservation

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Bechstein’s bat – PhD Student Blog

It has now been a year and a half since I’ve started my PhD at the University of Exeter and I still tend to get confused faces each time I start talking about my project. The bat lovers don’t always understand why I’m doing genetics and the geneticists don’t understand why I’m studying the Bechstein’s Read More

1st September 2016

Miss Piggy’s year

It doesn’t seem like five minutes since the pine marten team stood in the dark on a drizzly September morning welcoming the first translocated martens onto Welsh soil. Since then the project has zoomed along at what seems like an incredible rate, hitting all the milestones we hoped it would: releases, sightings by the public, Read More

13th July 2016

Pine marten translocations – PhD Student Blog

We have asked our PhD students to write a series of blogs about their research. This is the first in the series and written by the VWT’s Pine Marten Project Officer and part-time PhD student David Bavin. It’s hard to know where to start with this blog about my PhD research; I started in April Read More

26th April 2016

Back to the Highlands

Having spent a couple of months in the Highlands last autumn while we trapped pine martens for translocation to Wales, subsequently followed by a couple of months in the office (recuperating?!), it was great to head back to the Highlands in early March. We were greeted with some glorious spring-like weather, stunning snow-topped mountains and, Read More

21st March 2016

The lady in the van

So there I was, driving down the M6 in a van with four pine martens and a PhD student called Patrick. It’s not often you get a chance to do something as bizarre and exciting as this, and I was thrilled (and slightly nervous) to be invited along as a co-driver during one of the Read More

10th February 2016

Pine Marten Recovery Project January Update

Since the last blog update the recovery project has really progressed. Not only have all 20 of this year’s pine martens made it safely to their new home in Wales, they have also begun to establish their own territories. If you have been keeping an eye on our Facebook then you will have seen that Read More

6th January 2016

Pine Marten Recovery Project November Update

The past two months have been exhausting but hugely rewarding for all of us on the project team, as the first pine martens were successfully trapped, translocated and released in Wales. Trapping began in early September and this has gone extremely well. We are taking a small number of martens from each of several sites Read More

3rd November 2015

Pine Marten Recovery Project August Update

July and August have flown by in a flash and have been a whirlwind of planning, preparation and progress! Almost two years of preparatory work has come to fruition and we are now putting the final pieces into place, ready to catch the first pine martens in Scotland to translocate to mid Wales. One of Read More

2nd September 2015

Pine Marten Recovery Project June Update

June was a breakthrough month for the Pine Marten Recovery Project. We have always been committed to being as open and transparent with our plans as possible, and have sought to involve and inform the communities in our proposed release areas from the very beginning, so as to avoid any perception of surprise or exclusion. Read More

13th July 2015

Pine Marten Recovery Project April Update

Welcome to the PMRP blog for April! There were two major milestones in the project this month. Firstly, I finished up the woodland surveys for our year one release sites, and secondly, we undertook community meetings in the communities surrounding those sites. Woodland work I finished up the woodland surveys, with my final plots in Read More

15th May 2015
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