29 January 2020
A new team of students from Fitzharrys School spent the day in the ASP Lab working with Royal Society Partnership Grant partner Tanesha Allen from Oxford University’s Wildlife Conservation Research Unit at Tubney. The team listened to a short introduction from Tanesha about her research on the olfactory (smell) response of the European Badger and then learnt how to analyse the observed behaviour of wild animals using the BORIS software package.
Having chosen an animal and a type of behaviour to analyse, the students then viewed extensive video footage collected during last summer’s deployment of camera traps at Science Oxford’s Stansfeld Park site and prepared posters explaining their research questions, the evidence from their observations and the conclusions from their evidence. Animals observed included grey squirrels, foxes, muntjac deer and, of course, the Stansfeld Park badger family.
The initial part of this project will now draw to a close and will be celebrated at an event at Tilsley Park in February where all the schools involved will display their results to invited guests from WildCRU, The Sumatran Orangutan Society and The Royal Society as well as parents and senior staff from the schools.
Excitingly, the Fitzharrys students will now be taking over responsibility from ASP for the running of the extended wildlife monitoring project, which will continue across ten schools in the Abingdon area as well as potential involvement with similar projects in South London, Sumatra and Utah.
