www.ConservationEvidence.com Post-release GPS tracking of hand-reared Irish hare Lepus timidus hibernicus leverets, Slemish

• Main Authors: Co. Antrim, Northern Irel, Neil Reid, Alan T. Harrison
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Lepus timidus
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.210.4343; http://www.fs.fed.us/psw/cirmount/postings/pdf/ReidHarrison_GPS_Hares_ConEvid_2010.pdf

Animal rescue centres release large numbers of captive-bred, rehabilitated or translocated animals into the wild annually but little is known about their post-release survival and behaviour. We developed a novel and innovative coupling of traditional radio-tags with new GPS loggers to track hand-reared Irish hare Lepus timidus hibernicus leverets after release into the wild. Cyanoacrylate SuperGlue ® proved a poor fixative with two out of three leverets managing to detach their tags within 24 hours. Nevertheless, a total of 2,505 GPS locations were recorded every 60 seconds for one leveret over three nights (approx. 835 per night). The leveret dispersed <410 m from the original release site. It demonstrated exploratory behaviour including an ability to navigate accurately in a complex and unfamiliar environment returning to a habitual lie-up site each day. Its survival was confirmed up to 9 days post-release at which time its radio-tag detached, however, similarly aged leverets were sighted in the area for up to 2 months post-release (suggesting possible longer term survival). This is the first study to publish data from any GPS tagged lagomorph and provides ‘proof-of-concept ’ that large quantities of behavioural data can be recovered from small mammals 1-2 kg. Further development of these techniques will be highly valuable to future studies. BACKGROUND Animal rescue centres release large numbers of captive-bred, rehabilitated or translocated animals into the wild annually (L. Stocker pers. comm., cited in Moloney et al. 2006), including mammal species of conservation concern, for example, bats (Kelly et al. 2008) and water voles Arvicola terrestris (Moorhouse 2004, Mathews et al. 2005, 2006). However, such releases are frequently regarded as having little or no value by conservation biologists either due to the small numbers involved or their limited success