Staff at Vincent Wildlife Trust have produced a range of free, downloadable resources on the work to conserve threatened mammals in Britain, Ireland and mainland Europe. Some have written books that can be bought online through NHBS.
This report follows on from a pine marten Expansion Zone Survey conducted in 2012 (Croose et al., 2013), which provided information on current patterns of pine marten distribution in Scotland following population recovery and range expansion since the 20th century.
This report arises from a partnership project involving Vincent Wildlife Trust and Scottish Natural Heritage (NatureScot). The aim of this field-based survey was to gather new information on the changing distribution of the pine marten in 2012.Given the anecdotal evidence of the species’ continuing re-colonisation of Scotland following its historical decline, this survey concentrated upon an ‘Expansion Zone’ beyond the pine marten’s known range revealed by surveys in the 1980s (Velander 1983) and 1990s (Balharry et al. 1996).
Although sightings reports and occasional genetic evidence confirm the presence of the pine marten in parts of England and Wales, limited success in their detection despite concerted efforts suggest that they are not abundant and that populations have failed to recover from their historical decline.
The ‘Great North Pine Marten Pursuit’ surveys were initiated in order to collect pine marten DNA from extant populations of England. They aimed to determine the presence of pine martens in specific areas, and so allow a focussing of future conservation resources in those areas, whilst also determining the genetic haplotype of the pine martens.
In Ireland, the Irish stoat is considered to be a near-endemic subspecies, with >90% of the global population estimated to occur in the country. This study involved laying plastic baited hair tubes, 10 per 200 metres at 20m intervals, along hedgerows in the bottom left 1km2 of 10km grid squares across County Galway.
In 1995, Vincent Wildlife Trust (VWT) revived its interest in pine martens and explored a number of different methods of detecting the presence of martens, including scat surveys. During this period the Trust’s experiences led to a growing scepticism about the reliability of the field identification of scats on the basis of physical attributes.
