Survey guidelines for Australia’s threatened non-flying mammals

4 SURVEY GUIDELINES FOR NON-FLYING MAMMALS

4.1Other legislation and animal care and ethics

The welfare of target and other taxa should always be paramount.

Methods that have significant potential to cause disruption or harm to mammals include trapping surveys (which can require a permit under the EPBC Act and local or state government regulations) and broadcast surveys, which should be conducted in a manner that avoids exposing animals to prolonged playback calls. Methods should also be employed in a way that minimises damage to habitat (for example, trampling of vegetation).

Many of Australia’s states and territories, as well as some councils and other government organisations, have legislation, guidelines and policies regarding threatened species that are independent of the Commonwealth. This includes lists of threatened mammal species that may differ to those of the Commonwealth. Further, it is important to note that many of the survey techniques described in this document may involve activities that are regulated by individual institutional animal care and ethics procedures, or may be subject to legislative constraints under particular state or Commonwealth laws and regulations.
Licences may be required from the relevant state or territory government authority to carry out surveys, and additional licences may be required to carry out surveys in National Parks, State Forests or other government-owned land. Animal care and ethics approval to conduct surveys may also be required, particularly for techniques that involve the trapping and handling of animals. Removal of indirect evidence such as pellets and feathers may also require a permit from the relevant authority.
Licences must be sought from the relevant state or territory government authority prior to the commencement of a survey, including appropriate animal care and ethics approval. Examples of animal care and ethics guidelines are discussed with the appropriate survey techniques; however, the requirements may vary depending upon the requirements of different legislation, committees or individual approvals. It is incumbent on the investigator to ensure that the animal care and ethics requirements specific to each investigation that involves the survey of non-flying mammals are identified, understood and followed.
Voucher specimens: These survey guidelines do not recommend that specimen collections are made for the purposes of identification, due to the threatened status of the species. Alternatives such as non-lethal tissue biopsies (such as a small plug of ear tissue) could be made after the appropriate state or territory permissions are given.

4.2Effort

For the purposes of this document, survey effort has been prescribed based on a standard stratified survey design of areas up to 5 hectares in size.

Field surveys designed to detect threatened species require more rigorous design and effort than those used to detect common species. The probability that a species is detected during a survey is dependent on its abundance and distribution. All of the EPBC Act listed species are by the nature of their listing rare, and therefore it is unlikely that enough is known about their ecology, reproduction or habitat use to determine with confidence that any survey method or effort will guarantee a species’ detection. This means that even when a threatened species is known to be present at a locality, detection of it may require greater survey effort than what is required to detect a common species.
Survey sites or project areas may range in size from a single to thousands of hectares, and be either relatively uniform or contain a variety of landforms and vegetation types. These guidelines should be used as a guide for modifying survey effort to accommodate different sites. Failing to detect a species a particular location does not conclusively mean that it does not occur at that location. For this reason, this report is designed for an audience with an understanding of ecology, who will use the guidelines as a basis for devising an appropriate survey design to effectively survey a particular site (regardless of size or nature) or to assess if appropriate survey methods and sufficient survey effort have been undertaken to detect threatened non-flying mammals at a particular site.
For example, a project site of 500 hectares with uniform landform and vegetation composition might only require the same survey effort as a 50 hectare site, provided that sampling sites are chosen across the project site. If however the 500 hectare site contained several distinct vegetation types (rainforest, woodland, riparian) or significant landform types (gorge country, plains, caves) then sampling effort should be increased and stratified to give adequate coverage and representation. When undertaking a survey on a project site significantly larger than 50 hectares you should consider contacting Australian government and state/territory environment departments to discuss the appropriate level of effort.
Some justification of the sampling effort used, in reference to the survey guidelines, would be expected in the report.

4.3Overview of methods for small sized ground-dwelling mammals

Table 3: Small-sized, ground-dwelling mammals listed on the EPBC Act.

Family	EPBC Act status	Species name	Common name	Average body weight (g)
Croidurine	Endangered	Crocidura attenuata trichura	Christmas Island shrew	5
Notoryctidae	Endangered	Notoryctes caurinus	Northern marsupial mole, karkarratul	~55
	Endangered	Notoryctes typhlops	Southern marsupial mole, yitjarritjarri	55
Burramyidae	Endangered	Burramys parvus	Mountain pygmy possum	56
Dasyuridae	Vulnerable	Sminthopsis butleri	Carpentarian dunnart	15
	Vulnerable	Sminthopsis griseoventer boullangerensis	Boullanger Island dunnart	13
	Endangered	Sminthopsis aitkeni	Kangaroo Island dunnart	23
	Endangered	Sminthopsis psammophila	Sandhill dunnart	35
	Endangered	Sminthopsis douglasi	Julia Creek dunnart	55
	Vulnerable	Pseudantechinus mimulus	Carpentarian antechinus	20
	Endangered	Parantechinus apicalis	Dibbler	70
	Vulnerable	Dasycercus byrnei	Kowari	105
	Vulnerable	Dasycercus cristicauda	Mulgara	115
	Endangered	Dasycercus hillieri	Ampurta	unknown
Muridae	Vulnerable	Pseudomys pilligaensis	Pilliga mouse	11
	Vulnerable	Pseudomys fieldi	Shark Bay mouse, djoongari	46
	Vulnerable	Pseudomys australis	Plains rat	65
	Endangered	Pseudomys fumeus	Smoky mouse, konoom	68
	Vulnerable	Pseudomys shortridgei	Dayang, heath rat	73
	Endangered	Pseudomys oralis	Hastings River mouse	95
	Vulnerable	Notomys aquilo	Northern hopping mouse	39
	Vulnerable	Notomys fuscus	Dusky hopping mouse, wilkiniti	46
	Vulnerable	Xeromys myoides	False water rat	41
	Endangered	Zyzomys pedunculatus	Central rock rat	85
	Endangered	Zyzomys palatalis	Carpentarian rock rat	130
	Endangered	Melomys rubicola	Bramble Cay melomys	~100
	Vulnerable	Leporillus conditor*	Greater stick-nest rat, wopilkara	350
	Vulnerable	Zyzomys maini	Arnhem Land rock rat	94

*The greater stick-nest rat weighs on average more than 300 grams.
The survey techniques used to detect small-sized ground-dwelling species are similar regardless of the habitat the species comes from. Following the desktop study and habitat investigation (see ‘conducting surveys in six steps’), implementation of surveys should be according to a stratified sampling design. Where possible, survey effort should target habitat known to be suitable for listed species (if such information is available; see individual species profiles). The recommended survey effort is based on a study area of 5 hectares or less; for sites larger than this, surveys should be replicated within habitat types and/or plant communities.
The following survey techniques are currently used or appropriate to detect small-sized ground-dwelling mammals in the field:

• 
  daytime searches for the presence of potentially suitable habitat resources for nests or burrows such as spinifex hummocks, boulders, crevices in the ground or between rocks (see species profiles for details). Description of the survey technique and recommended effort is outlined in Section 3.1
  
• 
  daytime searches for signs of the species' presence such as tracks, nests, burrows or scats (description of the survey technique and recommended effort is described in Section 3.2.)
  
• 
  collection of predator scats, owl casts or remains, targeting predatory bird or mammal nests and dens (description of the survey technique and recommended effort is outlined in Section 3.2)
  
• 
  pitfall trap surveys (description of the survey technique and recommended effort is outlined in Section 3.3.8)
  
• 
  hair sampling device surveys (description of the survey technique and recommended effort is outlined in Section 3.3.7)
  
• 
  Elliott A trapping surveys (small mammal box traps) (description of the survey technique and recommended effort is outlined in Section 3.3.9).