RAUK - Archived Forum - Posts by MandS:

We have only just joined this forum but have been following the discussion with interest as observers. The NF - Bedford translocation has been mentioned several times and it seems worthwhile to explain what happened in more detail for anyone who does not know. (Though we did write a short account in Herp Line 10 (Autumn 2003).The adders were one year old juveniles, captive bred in the New Forest reptiliary. The first release by the Forestry Comission was in 2000 though we were not told about it until some time afterwards. The site chosen was very near an area where adders had been reported years ago but had apparently been wiped out by the foresters.

None were seen until 2003 when we discovered they had moved away from the release site to a different habitat. Since then there have been two more similar releases on the advice of EN (as was). As far as we can tell from the head patterns the survival rate is approx 25%. They have certainly bred successfully.

So what took place was not so much a translocation but a release into the wild of captive bred specimens. There are no plans for any further releases.

The downside is not so much the distance (though it would have been better to have, say, bred captive local animals at Whipsnade for example) but

1. the lack of genetic diversity in the release population

2. attention has been diverted from other local, but far more elusive, populations.

We are concerned about the numbers of people who, thanks to the publicity, visit the site to see and photograph them: could this drive them away? Last year an adder was reliably reported from a site where they had not been seen for 20 years so we cannot be sure that the old population does not survive.

To answer the various questions:

We cannot speak for the first release, which were not photographed by FE, but we were told all the juveniles came from long resident females. There was no reason to disbelieve this.

The adders we released were all photographed. The very approx. survival rate was calculated by dividing the original number released by the the number of identifiable adults before adders born at the site complicated the picture.

There is no funding but the adders are over monitored in that too many people go there to photograph them which is useful if they pass the information on to us but the potential disturbance worries us. If people just want to see adders they are so easy to find that hardly anyone one bothers to monitor the population at Stockgrove for example. That said the site where an adder was seen for the first time in 20 years is being checked on a daily basis mostly by the person who saw it but so far - alas - no joy.

Once the release had taken place we could hardly refuse to monitor the results and further releases were always forseen once the original one appeared to have succeeded. There was always the chance that we might learn something and the adders' rejection of what appeared to be suitable habitat in favour of a different one is instructive. Something that should be born in mind with translocations.

For better of worse Beds is a centre of introduced animals thanks largely to successive Dukes of Bedford. The year after the initial adder release a number of dormice (bred, we think, at London Zoo) were released at the same reserve. It had been intended to release them somewhere in Worcs but the F&M epidemic forced a change of plan. They have also deserted the original habitat in favour of a different one.

One of our adders was out at Maulden on Monday 16 at approx 1300 hours with snow still lying in the fields.

Marcus

We are not sure if this is the right place to ask but we have a slightly worrying development. On our main site the males have been around since early March, have sloughed, and there is plenty of combat but no sign yet of any females.

Any explanations?

Has anyone experienced anything similar?

Marcus and Sue