Team Quoll Newsletter July 2018

Newsletter July 2018

Issue 1

In this issue...

The story of Team Quoll Where’s Quolly?

Cans for Conservation Upcoming events Meet the team!

Camera trap photos of the season Every issue we’ll showcase the best of our latest camera trap photos.

The mysterious black panther....?

Nom nom nom - Swamp Wallaby

Wombat and bub

“Time for my close up!” - Brushtail possum

Readers! Send us your latest camera trap photos for our next issue.

Email Ana at: ag982@uowmail.edu.au

Welcome to our new newsletter

“In the end, we will conserve only what we love; we will love only what we understand and we will understand only what we are taught.”

- Baba Dioum

As Team Quoll grows as both a community and science based conservation group, we hope to further educate the public and raise the profile of our local spotted-tailed quolls and other threatened species that call the Illawarra, Southern Highlands, and beyond, their home.

Our hopes are that one day, quolls will be common as they were once before, so that anyone can experience and connect with this curious, beautiful and unique animal.

The spotted-tailed quoll is threatened with extinction and it’s up to us to do whatever we can. No matter how big or small our actions are, we can make a difference for these animals. Whether it be supporting feral fox and cat control, helping establish habitat corridors, monitoring populations of quolls and their prey, or slowing down at night when driving.

Team Quoll’s quarterly newsletter aims to share new insights into our local wildlife, wether that be from student research projects, citizen science campaigns, or local community events. We hope to connect readers with opportunities for involvement in our wildlife conservation research, and knowledge that can better our chances of our fight against the extinction of our native animals.

Contents Camera trap photos of the season ........... 1 Presidents address ....................................... 3 The story of Team Quoll .............................. 4 New conservation campagins ..................... 5 Upcoming events ........................................... 7 Meet the team ............................................ 10

About the editor. For the past few years, Ana Gracanin has been a research assistant for Team Quoll, and is currently the manager for Team Quoll’s community events and social media. If you have any questions, or wish to contribute to our newsletter, simply email Ana at ag982@uowmail.edu.au

President’s address...

Welcome to our first newsletter and I hope you enjoying reading about the activities that Team Quoll has undertaken in the last few months. We have been busy with lots of conservation research and community outreach activities of late. Most recently we helped our research partners from the Office of Environment and Heritage in their annual quoll trapping program at Barren Grounds Nature Reserve and Budderoo National Park. Lots of quolls were trapped during the survey work and important data recorded from which sound conservation management decisions can be made for quolls in those national parks.

Coming up, Team Quoll will be at the Australian Botanic Gardens Mt Annan for National Science Week, raising awareness about our spotted friends to the public. Also we are having a camera trapping themed movie night in early August I hope you can attend, as well as spotlighting tours and eco-walks.

‘Swampy’ - spotted-tailed quoll from Budderoo NP

Finally there’s a few new student members of Team Quoll I would personally like to welcome on board. I welcome Ryan Dallas (MRes), Cara Capaletti (MSc) and Denisha Tyler (BConBio) to Team Quoll and wish them all the best in their research and studies this coming semester. I am also excited to welcome Tony Markham to Team Quoll, who along with Craig Murrell and Kristen Lee, is now an official TQ Citizen Scientist; your enthusiasm, passion and energy for all things conservation is inspiring and I’m so pleased to have you join us. I look forward to working with them and all of you who will hopefully join us at one of our upcoming community events.

See you soon!

Kat

Team Quoll with local members of the community, hosting a spotlighting tour at Budderoo NP.

Dr. Katarina Mikac Univeristy of Wollongong

The story of Team Quoll It all started with a quoll named Dale Kerrigan...

Team Quoll began in 2014, when Dr. Katarina Mikac, University of Wollongong student Elira Reynolds, and citizen scientists Craig Murrell & Kristen Lee, began investigating spotted-tailed quolls in the Illawarra.

As part of a research subject at Univeristy, Elira approached the question of: “What is the current state of quolls in our local area?”.

Using previous scientific research, public sightings, newspaper articles, and community surveys and questionaires, it seemed there may have been a reduction in the number of quoll sightings over time.

Dale Kerrigan: the first quoll captured by TQ, and is featured in our logo!

Historical persecution of spotted-tailed quolls Farouk the second quoll captured by TQ

The group began to place cameras at 85 sites, on private properties in the Illawarra and Southern Highlands, and at Budderoo NP and Barren Grounds Nature Reserve. After 1190 trap nights, and over 10,000 photos, there was only 3 photos captured of two quolls, named Dale Kerrigan & Farouk.

Despite covering a large area, only capturing two quolls on camera, had the team concerned. It lead to more questions such as, “Is the population of low density?”, “Do we need to do more surveys of this cryptic animal?” and “Are invasive species an issue?”

Team Quoll continued to investigate these questions with Elira’s honours research project investigating the demography of quolls using camera traps. More recently, TQ has begun investigating predatory-prey patterns, through camera trapping arboreal and ground-dwelling prey mammal species, and spotlighting for arboreal species.

Team Quoll continues today to undertake conservation related monitoring and surveillance of quolls and other threatened native species in the Illawarra & beyond.

Two new campaigns!

Where’s Quolly? Camera trapping & citizen science Team Quoll is looking for local landholders whom may have potential quoll habitat on their properties. We hope to connect with these landholders so as to conduct preliminary camera trapping surveys for spotted-tailed quolls and any other threatened species that may be living on their land.

“Attention! Can you help us find the quolls living on your land? If you or someone you know, has land that may be potential home to quolls, we'd love to hear from you!

Pull up your citizen scientist sleeves and help us deploy some camera traps on your property, and hopefully we will find Quolly!”

Email us about your place, to Ana at ag982@uowmail.edu.au, and we'll see if it's got potential for a quoll survey.

Team Quoll with the Friends of Thirlmere Lakes, setting up camera traps. Photo credit: Tony Markham

Cans for Conservation: Bottles for Quolls With the recent 10 cent recycling scheme for bottles and cans in NSW, Team Quoll has begun collecting cans and bottles for fundraising, from around the Univerisity of Wollongong, which also helps to keep our environment clean and encourage sustainability.

If you have lots of bottles or cans lying around, please feel free to donate your 10 cent containers to our recycling bin located outside the Team Quoll lab, in Building 35, at the University of Wollongong.

Every donation is appreciated!

RETURN AND EARN! Most 150ml to three litre drink containers will be eligible for a 10 cent refund at an approved NSW collection point. Container materials that may be eligible for a refund include: - Glass - Plastic - Aluminium - Steel - Liquid paperboard (cartons)

For more information, head to: https://returnandearn.org.au/

Bottom left: Team Quoll Cans for Conservation poster. Top right: Team Quoll recycling bins. Bottom right: Information about what can and can’t be return’d and earn’d.

Upcoming events

TQ Social Night at the University of Wollongong Stay tuned on Facebook!

Meet the team For our first newsletter, it seems appropriate to let our readers know who we are!

In our next issue, we’ll delve deeper into some of the research projects our students are working on, such as conservation genetics of spotted-tailed quolls, and the Berry habitat corridor project.

Dr. Katarina Mikac Principal Scientist

Kristen Lee Citizen scientist & Detection Dog Trainer

Citizen scientists:

Craig Murrell Citizen scientist & Adventurer

David Blackall Citizen scientist & Owner of Wildlife Refuge

Beans Trainee detection dog for quolls

Tony Markham Citizen scientist & Official TQ Photographer

University of Wollongong Students:

Ana Gracanin Community engagement officer Research assistant

Monica Knipler Social media officer PhD Candidate

Hamish Pritchard Research assistant

Courtney Hill Research assistant

Ryan Dallas Masters student

Joel Nicholson Honours student

Bridget Potts Honours student

Vanja Gracanin Research assistant

Denisha Tyler Research assistant

Cara Capaletti Research assistant

Simon Vinson Honours student

Thanks for reading!