Emily Thrift, PhD student, University of Sussex recently visited the estate and this is what she had to say:
“Recently, my volunteers and I had the pleasure of visiting Gravetye Estate. We surveyed small mammals using 120 humane Longworth traps, across 3 fields near Home Farm. The species we found were the yellow necked mouse and wood mouse. After all individuals were identified to species level, they were released back into the environment and their faeces collected. The faeces samples will now be analysed to understand the levels of microplastic presence. This will be added to a wider dataset from across Sussex to give us an understanding of how microplastic pollution varies across land use types.
Next year I am leading the national hedgehog monitoring program and hope to deploy 30 wildlife cameras for 30 days at Gravetye.”
We are delighted to partner Emily with this important research work.
