WSB: Tracking down North Carolina weasels

The best way to attract weasels to understand more about their populations may be to use red meat as bait. Weasels in North Carolina, particularly the least weasel (Mustela nivalis), often evade camera traps, making it hard for scientists to monitor their populations. “We’re a little worried about the weasels,” said TWS member Roland Kays, a research professor at North Carolina State University and scientist at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, in a press release. “We don’t see them very often, but it’s difficult to tell if they’re actually gone or if they’re just so sneaky that we can’t find them. We decided that we needed to better understand the best method to detect them. There wasn’t a great consensus on that.” In a recent study, Kays and his colleagues baited 486 camera traps across the central and eastern U.S. where weasels live. Using seven types of lures, they found that red meat worked the best, particularly when supplemented with salmon oil. The challenge is that red meat also attracts other predators, so researchers may have to take extra precautions to make it harder for larger animals to reach the bait. “Now that we have an understanding of the best ways to lure the weasels, we can be more confident in the findings of our surveys,” Kays said. “When we have sites where we don’t detect them, we can be much more assured that they aren’t just in hiding, they’re really just not there at all.”

Read the study in the Wildlife Society Bulletin.