Ecol202: Backyard mammal tracking

As part of Lincoln University's Biological Diversity course (Ecol202), we run a series of Nature Journal exercises where students practise species identifications and monitoring techniques. Mission #2 is the Backyard Mammal Hunt, where everyone lays out a peanut butter baited tracking tunnel to collect mammal footprints. We also record any mammals we see using our gardens, including pet cats and dogs as well as any wild mammals.

Footprints are a commonly used way of monitoring New Zealand mammals, using baited tracking tunnels with ink pads. Dale Williams and Craig Gillies of the Department of Conservation wrote a useful short guide to identifying tracking tunnel footprints.

For more observations of footprints, see the iNaturalist NZ Animal Footprints project.

If you are unfortunate enough to see no mammal footprints on your tracking card, please enter that too. Do so by entering nothing as your species ID, Mammalia in the "Taxon sought but not found" field. It's also helpful on the website under Data Quality to check "Evidence of organism" as "No". less ↑