Turning back the tide of American mink invasion at an unprecedented scale through community participation and adaptive management
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Published source details
Bryce R., Oliver M.K., Davies L. & Gray H. (2011) Turning back the tide of American mink invasion at an unprecedented scale through community participation and adaptive management. Biological Conservation, 144, 575-583.
Published source details Bryce R., Oliver M.K., Davies L. & Gray H. (2011) Turning back the tide of American mink invasion at an unprecedented scale through community participation and adaptive management. Biological Conservation, 144, 575-583.
Actions
This study is summarised as evidence for the following.
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Control mink Action Link |
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Control mink
A large-scale systematic trapping programme in an area of moorland, livestock farms and forestry centred on the Cairngorms National Park, UK (Bryce et al. 2011) found that American mink Mustela vison were eradicated over a large area, conserving upland populations of water vole Arvicola amphibius. No mink were captured in 2006 when most traps were in catchment headwaters in close proximity to water vole colonies. However, capture rate increased rapidly as traps were added downstream (below 300 m). By December 2009, 376 mink had been caught (47% female) and an area of 10,000 km² appeared to be free of breeding mink. There was some evidence of localized water vole expansions, but re-colonization of the lowlands was expected to be slow. Capture rate increased with connectivity to mink in other sub-catchments and was highest from July-December. Mink rafts were used at 2 km intervals in each sub-catchment and were systematically moved downstream from the headwaters of the five main river catchments. Rafts were also retained upstream to remove immigrants. Once mink footprints were recorded on a raft, a trap was set. The project involved 186 local volunteers, including gamekeepers, conservation professionals, residents and land managers.
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