Well, some people might say that for a 'work' exchange there doesn't seem to be much work going on in these blog pages. My excuse is that I've been too busy at work to provide an update on all the play... I mean hard work that I get to do for Parks Victoria. Actually I have been assigned a fantastic project while I am in the Grampians, monitoring kangaroos and wallabies (macropods: large feet). It is the main project I am meant to accomplish while I am here, but I am also helping out with the natural values management team when and where I can. There are a number of exciting projects on the go here, which I will provide more detail about in future blogs.
I am fortunate to be following in the footsteps of Jeff Weir who on the inaugural exchange with the Grampians not only helped fight a fire that burned half of the park, but established 250 km of macropod monitoring transects in five gorgeous regions of the park. Jeff's forte is experimental design and monitoring technique, while my strengths are in data management, field data collection and spatial analysis, so our collective effort thus far has been a perfect fit for the project.
The monitoring program uses a technique called distance sampling, where you walk along a track or road (transect) and record the distance and angle to every kangaroo or wallaby you see. The idea is that if you get enough sightings in different regions or vegetation classes then you can figure out how far away from the transect you are effectively counting animals and through some interesting statistical analysis you can determine the density of each species in different vegetation, inside and outside the park, and in burned versus un-burned areas. This information feeds into a bigger project that is looking at the impact of grazing animals within the Grampians. With the introduction of rabbits, hares, red deer and foxes thrown in the mix with other marsupials and emus there have been dramatic impacts on some endemic vegetation communities.
Here's some evidence of me actually working. That isn't me up at the top left, just in case you were wondering, it is one of the summer rangers, Emily, who was brave enough to illustrate the proper technique for sighting a compass bearing to the animal. A number of summer rangers and international volunteers have been interested in the project as well so they have been helping out with the monitoring. I'm using the range finder to determine the distance and recording the GPS point and data in a PDA. Fortunately kangaroos and wallabies are only active in the early morning or late evening when the temperature is below 20°C so I generally start work at 5:30 am which gives me time to put a bike at the end point and get to the start point of a transect. Most transects range between 3 - 9 km in length and depending on the number of observations take between 2 - 4 hours to complete. Tracks in the Grampians are rarely flat, so needless to say I'm getting fairly fit. Once all the field work is done, I can take the data back in and have the computer plot the points in MapInfo to see if there has been any errors in collection. Below is an example of a transect with observations along it, with the different coloured dots representing different species.
The light blue dots are eastern grey kangaroos, who as you can see like open areas and are quite common in agricultural lands. The red dots are red-necked wallabies who like the forest edge or open woodlands. Brown are western grey kangaroos who tend to stay in smaller groups and use a variety of habitats and the black dots are black swamp wallabies who you rarely see together at all but are peppered across the forested landscape usually near drainages or wetlands.Here's a bit of a Grampians field guide to the four species of macropods.
At any rate, I feel very fortunate to be able to do some meaningful work in this beautiful park. The people here are hard working and get the job done, with obvious pride in what they accomplish. Given their very meager human and financial resources, what they do is impressive.If you think counting kangaroos is a push over easy job, then check out the image below. It makes counting sheep look easy.
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