Coorong National Park rangers will install remote access cameras on a South Australian island to monitor pelicans during their breeding season.
The site at North Pelican Island is one of the largest pelican breeding colonies in the state, with more than 400 birds expected for nesting over summer.
Ranger-in-charge John Gitsham said they would investigate whether a population of feral mice needed to be eradicated.
"We're concerned [about] what the impact might be on the breeding colony, whether the mice are predating on … chicks, or whether they are a supplementary food source for pelicans," he said.
"Because pelicans pretty well will eat anything."
Associate Professor of Biodiversity at Flinders University, Dr Greg Johnston, is also working on the monitoring program.
"[House] mice … have caused the extinction of bird breeding colonies, particularly on islands, all over the world," he said.
"So they've got a pretty bad rap, and it's a bit of a concern when you see a lot of mice holes on the pelican islands in the Coorong."
Dr Johnston said the mice would "actually eat living things".
"When the little [pelican] babies hatch they're quite small, they're featherless and they're stuck in the nest, and they can't move around much," he said.
"And it tends to be at that early nestling stage that the mice will actually eat the chicks. That's where we expect to find a problem."
Cameras to make monitoring easier
Mr Gitsham said the technology would allow rangers to more easily monitor the pelicans without disturbing them.
"In the past, you'd go to the island, you'd sit in the bushes with binoculars, and you would watch them on and off throughout their breeding time which is … from now until the end of March," he said.
"They breed over quite a long period of time over the summer so it takes up a lot of man hours."
Mr Gitsham said one camera was already installed on the island, but it was not remote access.
"With these other two cameras, we can place them there and then with our phone, day or night — because they're night camera as well — we can watch whether the mice are having an adverse effect on the pelicans. So it's a lot easier to monitor," he said.
Dr Johnston said they would measure the data against the normal rate of mortality among pelican nestlings.
"If we see an increased amount of nestlings dying, and if we see from the … cameras evidence that it's actually the mice that are causing that increase, then we swing into action," he said.
In that situation, alternative eradication methods to poison would be considered because of the potential for the pelicans to eat the dead mice.
"We need to balance all of those things up so we need to tread carefully, we need to tread swiftly," Dr Johnston said.
"We don't want pelicans to be destroyed on the Coorong because it's a really important breeding colony."
Funding from the Limestone Coast Landscape Board's Grassroots Grants program has seen the purchase of the two additional cameras and it is expected they will be installed by the end of the month.
