Looe Monkey Sanctuary

CMG were invited to attend the Wild Futures annual Native Wildlife Event. So Sue Morey and I set up a CMG display of supplemented by the Environment Agency’s taxidermy collection (thanks James Burke). We enjoyed a pleasant day by the seaside and spoke with many of the 100+ visitors who had come from all over the UK and further afield (one family were telling us about 3 metre pythons in the Thailand home!). We carried out small mammal trapping overnight and used the opportunity to compare traditional Longworths with the new BioEcoss plastic tube traps. We set out 5 groups of 4 traps (2 of each type) across the site. We collected 13 records – 3 bank vole, 7 wood mice, 1 field vole and 2 common shrews. Honours were almost level – 7 for the BioEcoss and 6 for the Longworths! Both the shrews were in the BioEcoss traps. It is worth noting the latter are about 1/3 of the price of Longworths! We tried trapping during the day for the benefit of the public, but had no success. We also supplemented these records with sightings of rabbit, grey squirrel and common rat – so lots of new mammal records for this poorly recorded area.