Innovative mammal conservation
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Prior to World War Two, Germany constructed an extensive system of defences along its then eastern border with Poland. Part of these fortifications consisted of heavily armoured bunkers connected and supplied by 32 kilometres of passages and railway tunnels 20 to 50m below ground. A series of subterranean railway stations, storage chambers and rooms to Read More
20th March 2012