I picked up Laura, one of the volunteers,
from Perth and headed for the sanctuary at Mt Gibson, about four hours drive
away. Laura is from New Zealand and has a degree and honours in ecology and has
moved to Perth because the job opportunities are greater here. On the way we
passed through a number of ‘towns’. These towns were very small, often just a
garage and one or two other buildings. The directions were vague, as is usual
with AWC. But we followed them and 70 kms past Wubin took a right turn down a
dirt track. Thirty kilometres later and a few false stops we found where we
were staying.
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| Laura |
The first day there were ten of us there.
We had to set up the traps. We worked in two teams, each team covering six
sites. At each site we set up two pitfall traps, two wire traps and twenty
Gilbert traps. The pitfalls involve erecting a small fence in a T shape. At
each end and in the middle there are buckets, so that reptiles and small
mammals follow the fence line and fall into the bucket. There are also six
funnel traps along the T. These are to trap snakes and larger lizards. The
cages are to trap larger mammals, such as bettongs and the Gilbert traps are
for hopping mice, dunnerts and field mice.
For the first day we have ten people here.
All of the others are young females and all have science degrees or doctorates.
There are four volunteers, one intern and the other five are ecologists. Some
of the ecologists are leaving after the first day to go back to their own sanctuaries.
The weather is reasonably mild.
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| Constructing pitfall walls |
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| Setting up the funnels |
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| Constructing dinner |
