RAUK - Archived Forum - Reptile Survey, best practice guidelines

Hi all

The HGBI guidelines on best practice or the Froglife Advice Sheet 10 on reptile survey are regularly cited in consultancy survey reports. 

It was decided, in relation to reptiles, the HGBI guidance needs updating.  The froglife advice sheet is clearly aimed at conservation volunteers and not professional survey work. Project work is being undertaken this year to look at survey protocols for volunteer reptile surveys.

I have been threatening to publish a guidance note for consultants through ARG UK and IEEM.

I thought that we can have a discussion on here regarding survey work. A separate post will deal with reptile mitigation work.

Reptile surveys

1. Multiple visits are required for reptile surveys over non consecutive days within the active reptile season (March to October)

2. Two survey methods should be employed - Visual encounter surveys (VES) using transects along suitable habitats - woodland edge, bramble, bracken, gorse stands etc and artificial refugia surveys (ARS) where a minimum of 25 ARS per hectare of available suitable reptile habitat (determined through habitat assessment & mapping). ARS & VES recorded using hand held GPS  

3. Presence/Absence surveys - 7 non consecutive survey visits in the spring and repeated in the late summer/autumn

4. Population estimates - based on 15 to 20 non consecutive visits across the reptile active season. say 7 visits in the spring and 7 visits in summer/autumn. Using peak counts or animal density figures to give a relative population estimate

5. Distribution of individual animal sightings need to be plotted on a suitable map. Important to map sightings on the study site and within the local landscape - distance up to 5km in case of grass snake, 2km for adders and 500m for lizards  

6. Weather conditions - each survey visit should have minimum/maximum air and ground temperatures, current weather conditions, previous weather conditions, wind speed & direction(?), Cloud cover (?),  

7. Permissions from land owner and client to release biological records to local recorders and national recorder prior to start of the survey - www.nbn.org.uk. Adders should be recorded as peak spring counts and submitted to Make the Adder Count - n.b. monitoring surveys can be set up within general area to repeat these counts in subsequent years. 

8. Reptile handling kept to a minimum - if it is necessary to capture animals for mark recapture analysis then only should be undertaken in the field and limit handling time. Adders in the spring can be photographed 'in situ' in their habitat during the laying out period.

9. Photo identification - (snakes) should be used to record individuals on a study site - to be determined by the surveyor if necessary to see whether new snakes are being found or are the same individual.

10. Habitat assessment - probably an important part of a reptile survey to look at the suitable reptile habitats on a site - a measure of the amount of different habitats in area would help to determine important habitat features when surveys results are combined to this information.

Habitats which are valuable to reptiles

Vegetation

Molinia, bracken, bramble, scrub, gorse, heather etc

Features

Banks, ditches, ponds, stone walls, underground workings, stone piles.....

Please do add comments and amend this as you see fit

We will be publishing this as a guidance draft to be reviewed at the HWM 2009.

Jon 

good point

As with all native wildlife if they are injured then vets normally will treat them free of charge etc - but is it the same for reptiles and amphibians? normally considered a specialism in vet circles

- often amphibians and reptiles can be kept at home until they recover - advice on conditions etc would be useful

Jon