Now what it really does. Turn off the phone. Yeah, turn off the phone. Thank you, mate. Put your camera on. So maybe up there or those ones over there. So if we had a little bit of live up there, but something here in front of it.
So today we are implementing the Forest Monitoring and Improvement Program Fauna Methodology. So we're putting out detectors on Indigenous Protected Areas, and we're working in partnership with the Banbai Rangers and Tamworth Local Aboriginal Land Council. So we're putting these detectors out in a grid-based fashion to record all of the fauna species that are in this area.
So we're going to set up there. I'll get it. The benefit of this project is that we're kind of making the most of new technology. So we're using remote devices. We've got some cameras that we can put out for long deployments, and they will remotely trigger when animals come across them.
We've also got acoustic recorders, so they're recording kind of birds, frogs, things that we can hear. But all of those sounds, koalas, all of the calls that we're hearing, and these recording devices record those, and then we can go back and identify what species were here. So what frog species, what bird species, what owl species, what microbat species were here. So these are set to just turn on at night.
So you've just checked all the little lights are on. Yeah. So they've gone off. Yep. Yep. Gone off now. Clicking him off, and so we're kind of picking a nice site where there's a little bit of open area for the bats to be flying around and nothing to block the microphone. Wait there.
Having the girls out with NRC, we're learning something again. What I'm fascinated about is the frog calls. Like, we've got a lot of frogs here on the dam, and it'd be good to know which one is calling, and when they come out, and whether they live in the tree or just in a log on the side of the banks.
And we've done a bit of bat work, but it was mainly to identify what we actually had on the property. Being able to hear them, it just puts a whole new spin on our jobs and on the diversity of Warrtewit. Identification, that way we can pretend that we're professionals and pass it on to our kids. It just sort of gives you that next level of passing on knowledge.
My nieces and nephews, they're there, they know what it is, and then they can step into that role and look after our beautiful country.
You can see the back pulls off, and what we have inside is just some bait that we've got—a bit of oat, peanut butter—and then that allows the animals to come in and sniff it but not take the bait, so we can just leave it there over time. What we have is a bit of a stake here, put a hole through the bottom, and then we dig it down so the animal can come and sniff, so we can catch it on the camera, and that he don't take the bait away.
It stays there, and then we can see what else comes through in that line and come in for a sniff. Probably about where Mundy's foot is maybe. Yeah, and there's just not really anywhere that—
As far as I'm concerned, long-term monitoring projects are incredibly important to understanding biodiversity and how that is changing over time in New South Wales. At the moment, we've got lots of people doing some really great work, but in slightly different ways. So this project brings all of those together, standardises the methods we're using, and makes sure that it's all the same and that we're able to compare it all as a single data set.
