Swift Fox Survey
A
couple years ago, the environmental consulting company I
worked for was granted a contract to conduct a survey of
the endangered swift fox, in the short grass prairie region
of south western Saskatchewan.
The survey was to determine a general presence/absence of
swift fox in an area of interest to the Oil and Gas
industry. Previous survey protocol used scent posts, baited
with sardines, and sand, to determine presence by tracks.
Since then, the use of scouting cameras was suggested as an
alternative to hauling in buckets of sand, and we ended up
using 10 of my own scouting cameras for the survey.
With not a whole lot of trees around the area (actually
none), we used two pieces of short re-bar pounded into the
ground about 4 inches apart. We then secured the camera to
the re-bar with an EZ-Webb bungee. Swift fox are very small
animals (about the size of a large house cat), and the
cameras had to be set only about 1 inch off the ground. A
small stake was also pounded into the ground about 1 meter
in front of the camera, and was baited with a mixture of
sardines and bacon grease.
Not only did the scouting cameras determine a
presence/absence, but they also gave us other valuable
information such as time of activity, repeated visits in
one night, as well as knowing if the visitor(s) were alone
or in pairs. All this bonus information was very
interesting, and would not have otherwise been determined
with previous, conventional techniques.
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