World Wildlife Day: Time lapse captures endangered reptile near Queanbeyan

Media release: 3 March 2015

On World Wildlife Day the Office of Environment and Heritage (OEH) shares information about a new technique for gathering information about one of the country’s most endangered reptiles which inhabits the native grasslands of the ACT and the Monaro south of Queanbeyan.

Scientists with OEH, based at Queanbeyan, have been studying the species closely on the Monaro tablelands for a number of years by installing artificial spider tubes that replicate habitat the dragon normally uses, abandoned spider holes.

However OEH reptile expert, Rod Pietsch, said today the process of checking the spider tubes was time consuming and labour intensive with limitations on the type and amount of information this technique could offer.

“Checking spider tubes manually was very time consuming so I have been trialling the use of time lapse photography and it’s proven to be a far better approach because it seems to be quite effective in recording dragons and far less labour intensive,” he said

Mr Pietsch said that the arrival of specialised photographic devices has really revolutionised surveying for wildlife. Remote infra-red, movement sensitive cameras , which can be left in the field for long periods of time, hold very large numbers of photographic images on memory cards that can be accessed virtually instantly once collected and this improved the amount and quality of information we can gather from the field surveys we conduct for all sorts of threatened species.

“However these motion sensitive cameras only work after detecting the body heat of an animal and because reptiles are cold blooded we could not use the camera in the way we would normally. So instead we installed 32 cameras in the field pointing directly down onto an artificial spider tube and set them to take a photo every 60 seconds for about eight daylight hours for two weeks and the results have been very rewarding.

“In our first trial near Queanbeyan we recorded a total of just over 360,000 images of which 5,555 contained images with a dragon present. Compared to previous survey techniques the use of time lapse cameras found more dragons in more locations.

“Because it’s far less labour intensive we can now survey more areas over a wider region than before but with the same amount of resources. This is quite a breakthrough because we can learn more, faster and get a better handle on the issues facing the species over time and how to manage them,” Mr Pietsch said.

To see the time lapse video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RtX6_vQluW8

Photos for news media:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/nswnationalparks/sets/72157650583990087/

Contact: Lucy Morrell