The Department of Land Resource Management (DLRM) is using modern technology such as camera trapping to help save some of the Territory’s most threatened species from extinction.

DLRM Flora and Fauna Division species conservation acting director, Brydie Hill said camera traps have proven a wonderful tool for detecting many threatened species.

“One of the projects we’re working on is to investigate the role of feral cats in threatened mammal decline,” Ms Hill said.

“This work has been done on Indigenous protected areas, national parks and a remote cattle station, applying technology such as  remote triggered camera traps proving very beneficial to our research.

“One of the big discoveries has been Northern Quolls surviving the cane toad invasion on the South Alligator floodplain (image attached), a good population of Black-footed Tree Rats (image attached) on Fish River Station and that Garig Gunak Barlu National Park on Cobourg Peninsula is one of the few mainland sites in the NT with Brush-Tailed Rabbit- Rat populations (image attached).

“Techniques for controlling feral cats with Djelk indigenous rangers and identifying individual cats with camera traps in Kakadu National Park have also demonstrated the important value of this collaborative project.

“And funding announced at this year’s inaugural Threatened Species Summit in Melbourne will mean that more work can be done to save the Central Rock Rats in the MacDonnell Ranges, using camera traps to find their refuge sites where they survive long dry periods between rains.

“We will also soon we will be doing some cat baiting in the MacDonnell Ranges with the support of federal funding.

“Wireless camera technology has also enabled us to do more research into finding Gouldian Finch nest sites in the Yinberrie Hills (see images of people with camera on a pole).”

Ms Hill said the DLRM Flora and Fauna Division is also working on threatened species in marine environments working with Indigenous ranger groups to protect marine turtle nesting sites along the Top End coastline and monitor their breeding success and using technology for a citizen science program to monitor marine turtles and other threatened marine species.

Today marks National Threatened Species Day, commemorating the death of the last remaining Tasmanian tiger (also known as the thylacine) at Hobart Zoo in 1936.

It is a time to reflect on what happened in the past and how we can protect our threatened species in the future.

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Media Note – Brydie Hill is available on 0437413767 for more information / interview