Progress update

 

It's been a while now and we thought it was time for an update. We have some great news about two new collaborations we've set up with Kingborough Council and Bonorong Wildlife Sanctuary.

The Felixer device itself won't be ready until late this year. Originally, we had planned to purchase a prototype version of the device without a functional firing mechanism. Although cheaper, this meant that the device wouldn't be able to be used after our project. Since then, however, we've been in talks with Kingborough Council who are purchasing several units for use on Bruny Island. We have agreed to co-fund one of these units: not only does this mean that your money will go towards a fully functional unit which can be used after our project is finished, but it also means that we will have access to multiple devices for our experiments. We think this is a win-win situation and are really grateful to Kingborough Council for their generosity and co-operation.

In the meantime we are working on the second part of our project, investigating the grooming behaviour of cats and quolls. At the moment, Hugh and Rowena are putting together some prototype video collars, which we hope to soon test out on captive quolls at Bonorong Wildlife Sanctuary.

Bonorong has a long history of supporting conservation research, and have been particularly generous with allowing researchers access to their captive animals. We met with manager Greg Irons this week, and as well as helping us check the fit of our video collars, they are also happy to let us trial the Felixer in the quoll enclosures. Although captive animals may have slightly different behaviours and body shapes than their wild counterparts, this will be a perfect opportunity to iron out the project logistics and make sure the collars aren't going to interfere with the wild quolls' ability to run, climb and hunt. For more information on Bonorong and the wonderful work they do please visit their website http://bonorong.com.au/conserv... or pop out and visit for yourself!

Thank you again for your support and we will continue to keep you up to date with the project as we go.