Den box monitoring update from Mid Wales
VWT's Martens on the Move Team has been busy checking pine marten den boxes to record any that are in use by pine martens.
Near the beginning of the pine marten breeding season in April, VWT’s Martens on the Move Team and a team of dedicated local volunteers visited the 42 pine marten den boxes in our Mid Wales monitoring hub to record whether any were occupied. Trail cameras were placed on den boxes thought to be occupied in hopes of capturing footage of this elusive species. You can read more about this work in our previous post here.
We have now retrieved the footage from all the trail cameras and are delighted to have found videos of pine martens in four different den boxes! Even more encouraging, signs of kits (baby pine martens) were found at three of these boxes. Den boxes provide pine martens with a safe place to give birth and raise young, replicating large cavities in old trees that unfortunately are rare in Britain today. The discovery of these kits reminds us why it is so important to continue our work providing suitable den sites for the species.
As well as monitoring the den boxes installed during VWT’s ground-breaking Pine Marten Recovery Project, Martens on the Move is installing 150 new pine marten den boxes across Wales, England and Scotland.
At one particularly busy den box, we captured footage of a mother with no fewer than three kits! Female pine martens will sometimes move their young from one den site to another as they grow bigger and their needs change. At this den box, we recorded the mother moving her three kits throughout the course of one morning. Our trail cameras are revealing exciting new information about pine marten behaviour but there is always more to learn!
A big thanks to our Mid Wales volunteering team, whose help with checking boxes, analysing footage and navigating around the forest ensures that we can continue to monitor pine martens at this site effectively.
Our next task in Mid Wales will be in October, when we will be carrying out maintenance work on some of the den boxes.
To register your interest in volunteering with Martens on the Move, click here.