Staff at Vincent Wildlife Trust have produced a range of free, downloadable resources on the work to conserve threatened mammals in Britain, Ireland and mainland Europe. Some have written books that can be bought online through NHBS.
Although sightings reports and occasional genetic evidence confirm the presence of the pine marten in parts of England and Wales, limited success in their detection despite concerted efforts suggest that they are not abundant and that populations have failed to recover from their historical decline.
The ‘Great North Pine Marten Pursuit’ surveys were initiated in order to collect pine marten DNA from extant populations of England. They aimed to determine the presence of pine martens in specific areas, and so allow a focussing of future conservation resources in those areas, whilst also determining the genetic haplotype of the pine martens.
In Ireland, the Irish stoat is considered to be a near-endemic subspecies, with >90% of the global population estimated to occur in the country. This study involved laying plastic baited hair tubes, 10 per 200 metres at 20m intervals, along hedgerows in the bottom left 1km2 of 10km grid squares across County Galway.
