detection, pest abundance indices, possums, rodents, tracking tunnels, trap-catch method, waxtags

Chew-track-cards: a multiple-species small mammal detection device

Detecting the presence of invasive mammalian pests is expensive, particularly where multiple species of interest are sympatric, yet is key to determining when, where and how much control to do, and the effectiveness of that control. Here we describe the efficacy of a simple new and cheap device, the chew-track-card (CTC), both as a potential tool for simultaneously indexing the relative abundance of sympatric small-mammal pests, and for cheaply and comprehensively mapping the distribution of these pests over large, remote areas.