A day in the life of a Coexistence Support Officer

11th July 2024

Join Coexistence Support Officer, Julia Brant, for a day at Rother Woods as part of the South East Pine Marten Restoration Project.

I recently joined Kent Wildlife Trust as the Coexistence Support Officer working primarily on the South East Pine Marten Restoration Project. This is a secondment granted by the John Lewis Partnership Golden Jubilee Trust, of time and skills to Partners (employees) to enable charitable organisations to further their aims and ambitions. I am lucky enough to be joining the project full time for 6 months working on the volunteering aspect of this project, as this aligns to my skill set in my day job within the Social Impact team.

To refresh my ecological skills (as it's been a few years since my Animal Science degree!) and help to gain valuable experience of what our Practical Volunteers do, each week I have been joining the field team at Rother Woods in Sussex.

Feasibility studies look at the current set of circumstances surrounding the project. Whether that's local people's opinions or assessing the numbers of small mammals found within the potential release areas. This helps to build a picture of the acceptance level, working with local people and also helps to plan any necessary mitigations.

For ecological feasibility we collect information using a variety of methodologies.

Trackplates - Trackplates are 3 small planks of wood which fold up to form a triangle, on the floor of the trackplate is sticky back plastic with a layer of ethical charcoal (coconut husk powder) at each end, footprints of small mammals are recorded as the animal passes through the trackplate. This is called non-invasive monitoring.
Mostela Boxes - scent is used to encourage mustelids to visit a camera trap in a small wooden box.
Squirrel Drey Surveys - a walked transect across the site, recording grey squirrel dreys (nests) in the area.
Audiomoths - capture sound of birds or bats in the surrounding areas.
Camera Traps - capture images of passing creatures.
Dormouse Tunnels - plastic tubes with sticky paper to record dormouse footprints.

Last week, I met Amy Fitzmuarice (Project co-manager) and one of our lovely volunteers Doug at the Rother Woods.

Each week we attend to different pieces of equipment. Friday's task was to collect the Audiomoth devices which have been deployed in their locations for 5 weeks. At each point there are 2 devices, one capturing bat sounds and once capturing bird sounds.

The field data is recorded in Mergin Maps, a handy app that captures the GPS location and details of the device deployment such as canopy cover, habitat and details from each of the checks.

Thankfully the weather was kind and we made our way across to the various locations as directed by the app. We made good progress before heading to meet Doug, hoping another set of eyes to peruse the dense canopy would help us increase our speed for the remaining devices. Point RW59 and RW62 were a bit more challenging, despite Amy and I circling Doug, who remained at the point, whilst we intensively scoured the area, these devices were not forthcoming.

We then stopped for some lunch, to enjoy the sunshine, and renew our enthusiasm for trying again.

The remaining points were exactly where the GPS had recorded them and were successfully retrieved ready to be processed at the office.

The following week went back to point RW59 and RW62, upon looking at slight variations of the original GPS point, volunteer Nick found RW59 and Rosie found RW62. Fresh eyes made all the difference!

Whilst the audiomoths have not been processed yet, we can share some lovely clips captured from the mostela boxes below: