Mink monitoring advice required please

[Adam Cheeseman]

Hi Folks,

When carrying out casual monitoring for the presence/absence of American Mink, what is the suggested site visit frequency?

Cheers,

Adam

[vole-woman]

If you have tracking pads down then ideally every day or two, before the clay becomes unreadable. I used to leave it a week and then chaos of little pawprints when I came back was mad.

[Adam Cheeseman]

Cheers!

Adam

[Dogghound]

Yes if you are using clay you will need to visit them every couple of days. If they are in the open then everyday, if it is very dry you may want to keep them moist so they dont totally dry out. If you are using traps then they must be checked at least once a day, if not more.

Not sure how much experience you have of mink but you can greatly enhance your clay block success rate by placing them in/or close too key habitat features. Tributaries, intlets/outlets such as drains and ditches, where hedgerows or bunds meet the waterside, bridges, islands, logs, fallen trees, rocks, culverts are all good sites to place them. Try to keep them close to banks and cover, mink tend to follow linear features both in and out of water.

You also need to make sure that fluctuations in water levels will not wash out the block. Now is a good time of year to get positive results as is late summer/autumn when individuals are more mobile, especially males.

Also if/when you start to trap use otter guards and I find offal is quite a good bait although they feed on virtually anything meaty including road kill and rotten fish. Make sure your trap is not accessible to none aquatic mammals like badgers and foxes which can move it and try to get at the food inside it, often setting it off.

[Adam Cheeseman]

Cheers Dogghound.

I've taken over a biodiversity post and there are rafts located in a couple of suitable places in connection with the Rivers Crane and Colne. They haven't been monitored for at least three months so no doubt I will have to do a bit of repair work to them.

Is the level of monitoring you state necessary if it is only to ascertain presence/absence if it is unlikely to result in any subsequent control measures?

Cheers,

Adam

[Dogghound]

Originally Posted by Adam Cheeseman

Is the level of monitoring you state necessary if it is only to ascertain presence/absence if it is unlikely to result in any subsequent control measures?

If you are not planning on direct control then a more relaxed approach is fine. Although in my experience it is better to directly target the mink at the first sign of presence.

If time is a constraint I would suggest intensive checking in spring and autumn and relaxed checking in summer and winter. The level of observation is simply influenced by the condition of the clay and how quickly you want to act in managing the mink. There are no hard or fast rules to this, to check for presence I guess you could just check the rafts whenever your in the area. Are you using mink rafts with covered clay blocks? if so it may not be necessary to check them so often and do it once a week or more. The blocks in some areas as Vole-Woman suggests can become littered in footprints or washed clean meaning more regular checking is required.

If you are casually looking for presence and absence it may be worth looking through the site for scats, kills, footprints in mud and snow etc.

I check mine between 3 days to a week (between September and April) then take them out during the summer. I only do it so intensively to stop mink entering my duck trap and causing problems to the local wildfowl. I have not found a mink print for over a year and have relaxed my checking effort due to this.

[Adam Cheeseman]

There is no direct control stipulated with management plans and, as yet, I have found no records as to whether mink are present or not on my sites.

Thanks for the detailed timings that you use, very helpful and will save me quite a bit of time.

Cheers,

Adam

Originally Posted by Dogghound

If you are not planning on direct control then a more relaxed approach is fine. Although in my experience it is better to directly target the mink at the first sign of presence.

If time is a constraint I would suggest intensive checking in spring and autumn and relaxed checking in summer and winter. The level of observation is simply influenced by the condition of the clay and how quickly you want to act in managing the mink. There are no hard or fast rules to this, to check for presence I guess you could just check the rafts whenever your in the area. Are you using mink rafts with covered clay blocks? if so it may not be necessary to check them so often and do it once a week or more. The blocks in some areas as Vole-Woman suggests can become littered in footprints or washed clean meaning more regular checking is required.

If you are casually looking for presence and absence it may be worth looking through the site for scats, kills, footprints in mud and snow etc.

I check mine between 3 days to a week (between September and April) then take them out during the summer. I only do it so intensively to stop mink entering my duck trap and causing problems to the local wildfowl. I have not found a mink print for over a year and have relaxed my checking effort due to this.