General
Odour ‘misinformation’ fools feral cats, ferrets and hedgehogs into ignoring nesting shorebirds
Grant Norbury didn’t anticipate his ecology career would take him traipsing around river plains in the middle of New Zealand’s South Island, squirting blobs of stinky concentrated chicken goo from a syringe and spreading it over rocks with a gloved finger.
Key points:
- Migratory shorebirds on New Zealand’s South Island are easy pickings for predators
- A new conservation technique uses odour paste, which trains predators to stop associating the smell of birds with a meal
- Shorebirds nesting in odour-treated areas had nearly double the number of successful chick hatchings when compared to control areas
“It was quite a bizarre concept, trying to protect birds by smearing smelly Vaseline onto rocks,” the New Zealand-based Landcare Research…
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