Farmland monitoring surveys mouse populations in crops

Posted on: 10th November 2020

Landscape Ecologist Grace Hodder is spending three weeks monitoring house mouse numbers on farmland on southern Yorke Peninsula.

This will be the third mouse survey conducted on farmland for the Marna Banggara project. It’s about capturing baseline data of mouse populations during the cropping season, so we can compare it with data once the project is in full swing. The idea is that by boosting the number of Barn Owls on southern Yorke Peninsula, we’ll help farmers reduce crop damage caused by mice and also lower baiting costs.

It’s a good example of one of the special aspects of this project. Marna Banggara is about bringing locally-extinct species home and restoring the native bushland, but it’s even more than that. The project area is part of a working landscape, with a thriving agricultural community and travel industry and we hope that it will achieve flow-on benefits to farmers and the local economy.

Grace also did another set of mouse surveys in remnant bushland. In this case she’s capturing baseline data of mouse numbers before we re-introduce Red-tailed Phascogales. The native Red-tailed Phascogale is a small carnivorous marsupial that will help regulate mouse numbers in place of cats and foxes.