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sussexecology View Drop Down
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote sussexecology Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 10 Sep 2012 at 2:42am

Glad that you agree with me Gemma. Smile
I don't think i have had a reptile project without exclusion fencing.

Would you ever dream of doing a great crested newt project without fencing Jon - Nope.
Same principle applies with reptiles with the exception that you are not using pitfall traps.

Thank you for raising all those points though Gemma, and confirmation of those myths. Smile.

I will use habitat manipulation to help with capture effort, in cases where i think it will be of use to me and the reptiles. But never as the sole mitigation method. It does not resolve any issues or ensure that reptiles are protected from harmful operations. What it does do is reduce their habitat cover, make them more prone to predation and of course put breeding reptiles under stress. This will result in a net loss of local conservation status which is what is to be avoided.

Sorry Jon but Gemma and I don't agree.

Full of beans tonight and no idea why.
Those dawn surveys last week have given me jet-lag. Smile
Heading over to the music thread shortly...

Regards
SE Reptile Ecologist

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herpetologic2 View Drop Down
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote herpetologic2 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 10 Sep 2012 at 10:21am
Hi there SE (who is this I am talking to btw)

I am all for using exclusion fencing where it is appropriate and is useful in many cases particularly in the 'in situ' situation where of course you have undertaken surveys found where the important reptile habitat is situated and advised the client to move their planned development - avoiding the impact in the first place - a key part of reptile mitigation I think you will find which most people do not find themselves in that situation as the development is drawn up often before the reptile survey is even started.

I also know that there are many different ways of installing exclusion or inclusion fencing where you want to keep animals within areas without moving them. reduces the costs of physically capturing them. 

There is no right or wrong way of going about reptile mitigation as the law does not require it. It just requires that people take steps to reasonably avoid killing or injury to reptiles when it should also be maintaining the conservation status of reptiles - the widespread species at least.

You can in some cases use habitat manipulation as the sole method of mitigation on sites where this is possible. Even in large sites this method can be used very effectively at the right time of year - using armed flails, hedge cutters etc you an take out lots of sub optimal habitat during the winter so that you do not have to try and capture animals which have not even colonised those areas.

Using survey techniques you can monitor the relative abundance of reptiles within these areas and leave suitable foci so that animals can be captured by hand if need be.

No one has ever looked into the effectiveness of exclusion fencing or other methods and no one has looked at the cost effectiveness of 'over mitigation' in reptile projects.  Reptile mitigation is often quoted as being expensive and I do believe that many reptile projects do not meet the guidance - yes we are great are preventing harm/death as the first step but we are rubbish at the second aim - maintaining local conservation status.

SE - so you think that reptile mitigation involving translocation would not lead to more predation, stress for breeding animals and starvation? The very nature of translocation I suspect would lead to these things - many animals which are moved in translocations will die - moving them into smaller pieces of habitat as is often the case in reptile mitigation projects utilising 'in situ' translocation. In fact development projects should look to accommodate reptiles and their habitats within the design of such developments - avoiding the impacts resulting from the development of reptile habitats.

In EPS projects this would be mandatory under the licensing requirements - for the widespread species there is no licensing, no mandatory avoidance measures, no monitoring, no management just 'bucket them and dump them' over the fence......

Out of interest SE have you managed to work with EPS reptiles at all?

  




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GemmaJF View Drop Down
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote GemmaJF Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 10 Sep 2012 at 11:51am
Jon it might be your business model to promote cheap reptile mitigation by habitat manipulation thus saving your clients a bundle on fencing and capture effort, the rest of us know it simply isn't a viable solution. 

Nobody looks into it because it is common sense that fencing is generally required to exclude animals from the works areas throughout a project. 

Perhaps if you had actually worked with proper exclusion fencing in the past rather than ultra cheap polythene full of holes, you would appreciate the benefits of fencing more. 

West Malling was a prime example that your methodology was not working. What fencing you did install was full of holes and not properly installed at base level. Animals could be found in very high concentrations in sub-optimal surrounding habitats due to displacement from your 'habitat manipulation' where previously the habitats had supported very few animals... 

Regarding the adult animals moved any distance in a mitigation, I would say the aim is always to move gravid animals in the hope the young will be born into the new habitat. 

As for in-situ, I very much doubt animals 'put over the fence' undergo a very large amount of stress,  being moved a few feet within their home range. Certainly I know many individual animals to this day that were moved in-situ and are still around showing no signs that the experience did them any harm at all. Animals that no doubt would have been squashed by diggers if they hadn't been moved and excluded from the works areas.




Edited by GemmaJF - 10 Sep 2012 at 11:52am
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herpetologic2 View Drop Down
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote herpetologic2 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 10 Sep 2012 at 12:41pm
Hi Gemma,

Clearly it is not my business model to promote cheap reptile mitigation just looking at the cost effectiveness of the standard reptile mitigation practices used by consultants in the UK is in some cases way over the top.

Look at the recent examples in Essex - London Gateway, M25 Junctions 27 to 29, Wallasea Island the list goes on. Timing clearance works, undertaking 'proper' surveys, locating suitable habitat and protecting this rather than clearing it.

In West Malling I have not been back there for 6 years. The work I undertook there involved the removal of reptiles from suitable habitats. My first survey there was in 2002, a lag of a few years I went back and found that the main field had been cleared - not through my recommendation. However we often have to try and do our best and I managed to create some of the largest reptile hibernacula I had ever built - over 100m long using the felled trees in the tree belts around the site. I did have a plan there though I did not manage to continue it through with monitoring as other more local reptile people took over - you see even I can be undercut by local consultants!

The plan was to carry out extensive clearance of further tree belts to create more hibernacula and basking areas for reptiles etc. 

As to the fencing it was very much over engineered with the temporary plastic but dug over 1 metre into the ground. I would not have recommended that but it did keep out grass snakes and slowworms for a long time before it disintegrated. 

In situ has its own problems with over loading smaller areas of habitat with thousands of animals from  a larger area - I am pretty certain that the animals do go through stress - how much no one knows

Predation may also increase and competition for food and space will also increase (you would assume). 

Resources into habitat creation, monitoring and management is just as key as collecting animals from sites when this is required. I am only saying if you do your job on a proper time scale before the design of the development you can avoid the impacts by good design. We all know that this currently still happens very rarely. 

SE How are the early morning reptile visits this week? 





 
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote GemmaJF Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 10 Sep 2012 at 2:15pm
Yes I do see you point Jon, I guess I don't see miles of fencing and moving animals as the only solution. Just part of it. All my work involves extensive surveys of surrounding habitats to ensure I have a clear picture or in management speak 'helicopter view' of the situation. Generally though fencing and capture will form part of any solution I come up with.  I can see your point that it isn't the first consideration, and that many consultants work by putting up the fencing and bucketing out animals without giving much considerations to what they are actually doing.

Regarding in-situ I would say it really depends. If there are ample opportunities to be creative with the habitat one could bring a low density site of small area up to 'Grade A' reptile habitat quite easily, I've never really found it difficult to create reptile habitat to compensate for areas that are lost during developments. 

Really the only job I felt we couldn't do that was on the M20. Though we did carryout some habitat creation and in-situ movements of lizards, most of the surrounding habitat was already optimal with high densities of reptiles, so we had to move some animals out rather than 'dump over the fence' and hence overload the already ideal habitats in the area. So I took the opportunity to extend a nearby site I had worked on previously to compensate.

The other job were I'll own up we opted for over the fence in-situ and took no action to improve the habitat involved a fuel depot, we simply couldn't put in any habitat enhancements due to fire risk. Fortunately the works areas were tiny in comparison to the available 'dumping' area, so impacts were low.  It was a job also marked out by the fact that a developer on an immediately adjacent site had 'got away with' destroying a vast swathe of reptile habitat in previous years with no form of mitigation. So I really felt our clients should not be made to jump too many hoops considering they were a little reluctant to carryout any form of mitigation in the first place and knew full well other people had got away with far worse.

It comes down to initial survey again really doesn't it? Knowing what we are dealing with, seeing the bigger picture and actually coming up with a scheme that benefits reptiles in the long run. Rather than jumping a few hoops and ticking a few boxes. I can see from that point of view that just assuming that reptile mitigation involves putting in miles of fencing and bucketing the animals out of the works area is the wrong approach. 

I don't think in-situ movements are any worse in terms of stress than any other form of handling, for photography, scientific purposes etc. Reptiles generally seem to return to normal activities very soon after these events, I'm sure we all know this don't we?




Edited by GemmaJF - 10 Sep 2012 at 2:32pm
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote herpetologic2 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 10 Sep 2012 at 2:45pm
The main thing is to work to the two aims of mitigation - 1. avoid harm and death during development etc and 2. maintaining local conservation status. No matter how the guidelines have changed or withdrawn the main aims still stay the same. 

Its down to how to go about this in a variety of different situations, time scales and also the willingness of the client. I have to say that quite a few are better to work with than some NGO land managers. Of course there are some which get away with murder - I tend to not work with those people/organisations. 

It is why I really like my work as it is often challenging and definitely when I am creative with the measures that we use to help reptiles. A combination of methods is always a good way to go. I would say that I tend to carry out surveys prior to any habitat manipulation - very low or no animals is often the places where habitat can be reduced. Higher densities of animals would be too risky and where it is important to exclude animals fencing is the quickest way of achieving this - using trenchers etc is much better than using mini diggers.

I agree with all that you have said Gemma. I am sure whatever you do reptiles will go through stress. The Canterbury study into translocated slow-worms have shown that these animals go down hill for the first two years but after 10 years of monitoring it seems the animals are doing okay - breeding at least. 


Edited by herpetologic2 - 10 Sep 2012 at 2:51pm
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote GemmaJF Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 10 Sep 2012 at 5:13pm
Originally posted by herpetologic2 herpetologic2 wrote:

The main thing is to work to the two aims of mitigation - 1. avoid harm and death during development etc and 2. maintaining local conservation status. No matter how the guidelines have changed or withdrawn the main aims still stay the same. 


Totally agree Jon, I think this is where we were differing earlier.

I had assumed one would have started from that basis. But of course many consultants don't, they simply consider the harm aspect in terms of protecting their clients from prosecutions rather than looking at what opportunities a contract offers in terms of the second point. Hence they put in miles of fencing, tons of effort on capture, but never really consider the second and in many ways more important aspect of any mitigation. Which I think was the point you were making all along.

It's certainly the fun bit isn't it, ducking and diving with the client and seeing just how creative one can get for the benefit of the animals hence why I love the work also.

I'll be glad to be back out there next year after a long break whilst Mervyn recovered from his illness.


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