WILDLIFE RESOURCES COMMISSION CONDUCTS SMALL MAMMAL SURVEY

The North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission recently spent a week on Grandfather conducting small mammal surveys. The surveys are part of a bigger, overall project for Western North Carolina which targets mammal species of special concern.

The state designation of special concern means that not much is known about a species’ population. The NC Wildlife Resources Commission conducts these surveys to get a better understanding of the animal so it can then create proper conservation management strategies.

Scott Bosworth, a Mountain Wildlife Diversity Biologist with the Wildlife Resources Commission, has conducted these surveys twice at Grandfather Mountain. During the first trip he was looking for the water shrew and the long-tailed or “rock” shrew. He was successful in locating the rock shrew.

This time around Bosworth was looking for the water shrew and also hoping to locate a rock vole. Traps were set in the boulder fields for rock vole and in streams for the water shrew.

A group of students from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington were on hand as volunteers and took over a lot of the responsibility of running the traps. The traps were set during the day, left open throughout the night and then checked in the morning.

"Having the volunteers from UNC-W was great," said Bosworth. "They really helped maximize the efficiency of the surveys. This is just another example of how collaborations with other organizations can really help the Wildlife Resources Commission."

While the group was not able to find water shrew or rock vole this time, they did find a few other interesting species on the Mountain like the star-nosed mole and the hoary bat.

This finding of the star-nosed mole was the first recorded sighting on Grandfather Mountain. Star-nosed moles appear to be widespread and fairly common along mountain streams in the western part of the state but are a species of special concern in the coastal region.

"The hoary bat is the largest in the state and in my opinion the neatest," said Bosworth. "They are considered relatively common but they are rarely captured because of their behavior."

This behavioral trait is that they are higher fliers than most bats. With the help of mist-netting the group was able to catch a hoary bat. Mist-netting is a technique where a net is suspended on poles and can be hoisted up and down making the process much easier to get to a bat once it has been caught. These bat counts began just before dark and lasted five hours into the night.

The NC Wildlife Resources Commission comes to Grandfather for its range of elevations and diverse habitats. It is thought that these differences will increase the potential of finding some species of concern. With so much land still not surveyed at Grandfather, Bosworth hopes to return in the future for more tests and investigations.

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