Glenelg Ark: making a difference for 20 years

What does managing and measuring the impact of pests on Crown land over a 20-year period look like?

For Glenelg Ark, it’s a story that’s told through more than 3.12 million photos and 450,000 kilometres of driving on state forest and national park tracks.

The pest management project in the state’s far south-west is marking 20 years of striving to bolster endangered mammal populations such as the Southern brown bandicoot and Long-nosed potoroo.

Since 2005, Glenelg Ark has been delivering a landscape-scale fox-baiting program, using camera monitoring across the 90,000-hectare project area to assess effectiveness of reducing foxes and increasing numbers of small mammals.

Monitoring cameras placed across the project area evaluate the types and numbers of animals in treated versus untreated areas. The cameras are pivotal to assessing the program’s effectiveness in reducing fox numbers and increase in small mammal numbers.

Glenelg Ark Project Officer Ethan Le Duc said the project is unique, in that 20,000 hectares within the project area is left untreated to provide a comparison as a ‘control’ area.

'One of the major achievements has been a significant reduction in fox numbers, which on average is four times less fox activity in baited areas for foxes,' he said.

'It’s also been amazing to get 20 consistent years of replicating the treatment and non-treatment experiment style of the project.'

'This consistency has allowed a lot of other projects to be piggybacked off that research, including PhDs on feral cats, the effects of fire and fox baiting on Potoroos, and research on reptiles.'

Technology changes over the last 20 years have also seen the project move from paper-based collection to a fully digital data collection system.

Camera monitoring began in 2012 – before then, hair tubes (tubes with double-sided sticky tape inside) were used to collect hair samples from animals that were studied under the microscope. Sand pads were also laid for animals to walk over, with crews then examining footprints to determine which species had been in the area.

The introduction of camera monitoring has advanced over time, with better quality cameras and sharper images leading to an increase in the quality of data collected.

Ethan started working on the project in 2020 with a background in environmental science. He’s found the role to be a perfect balance between field work, scientific research and land management.

'I love having an active role in land management and research while working in the field, and it’s been really rewarding to work with different PhD students over the years,' he said.

'We’re fortunate to have a great team of field staff who help with camera monitoring, and the project has been driven by a number of great people over its 20 years.'

What’s next for Glenelg Ark?

The team is looking for ways to expand Glenelg Ark, while sharing its learnings with other projects tackling the impacts of pest species on native populations. Trials are underway to explore the use of habitat pods, and how fox management can be incorporated into other work programs, such as planned burning.

In the immediate term, the team will be back on the road, changing batteries in monitoring cameras (more than 34,560 AA batteries have been recharged since camera monitoring began) and looking for way to improve pest species management managed on Crown land.

Glenelg Ark is funded by the Victorian Government’s Weeds and Pests on Public Land program and is helping ensure that Victoria’s natural environment is healthy, valued and actively cared for.

Visit the Weeds and Pests on Public Land program page to learn more about similar work being done across Victoria.