A team of animal care staff (Chris Hamlin, Jen Moll, Amy Alfrey) left their usual workplace at the San Diego Zoo’s koala barn to help us with our koala conservation project in Australia on St. Bees Island (see Bill Ellis’s blog Koala Team Sets New Mark on the Knoll). On this particular day, our goal was to catch Murray (pictured), an adult male, in order to remove his GPS collar and find out where he had been wandering over the last few months.

The day began as did all other days at the field research site: checking our equipment. We had some idea of Murray’s whereabouts because we could detect a faint beeping signal from his collar while still at the field camp. So we set out in the direction of his signal. We followed a goat trail for as long as possible, and then went off into the bush. St. Bees does not have any marked trails, so we started our cross-country trek by following the beeping noises on our radio receiver that hinted at the direction and distance we needed to go to get to Murray. We went through scrub brush, dry river gullies, open grass areas, Eucalyptus forests, thorny vines, and rocky hills; we even walked into the occasional spider web. The going was slow since the temperature was in the low 90s, the humidity was not far behind, and the terrain was ever-changing and steep.

Finally, about three hours after leaving the home base, and having travelled only about 1.2 kilometers (¾ mile), we found Murray resting in a tree. We held a brief strategy session to figure out the best way to get him down from the tree. We each had specific roles in the planned capture, including two student interns from France (Caroline Le Bris and Maud Cloarec), who were working with one of our partners, Alistair Melzer, at Central Queensland University in Australia. With everyone in place and ready, we began to encourage him to descend the tree by shaking burlap bags over his head. He started moving down the tree, paused, looked left and right, and then jumped to the ground. He plopped right in front of Amy, one of the experienced San Diego Zoo koala keepers, who immediately nabbed him. We removed his collar to download the stored data and collected a number of body measurements from him. After that, he went back up his tree, and we went back to the field camp.

One of the biggest mysteries in koala ecology is trying to determine why they move as often as they do and where they go when we are not tracking them. We were really surprised to learn from Murray’s GPS collar that he had spent some time on part of the island that we had never visited! Why did he go there, we wondered? We don’t yet know the answer, but koalas like Murray provide crucial information for koala conservation. By wearing their collar, they can “tell” us where they have been and we can use this type of information to help preserve the proper habitat for Murray, his children, and his relatives throughout Australia.

Fred Bercovitch is head of the San Diego Zoo’s Behavioral Biology Division.

Bill Ellis will be discussing the San Diego Zoo’s koala research program in Australia when he comes to San Diego in April 2008 to present a Special Speakers presentation at the Zoo.

Posted in Default, Conservation, Field Studies, CRES (Conservation and Research for Endangered Species), General | Link to this post

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