29 June 2018 Team Vole Part 1

What's A Vole?

Voles are small, mouse-like mammals that are more closely related to lemmings than to other rodents. They live above ground and feed on vegetation, seeds, roots, and anything else they can find. Voles are active year round, digging tunnels through the snow to get to food stores and burrows. They will chew paths through vegetation after snow melt to create paths they follow to food sources. Typically they have a short life span, but mainly due to the fact that they are prey to so many other animals. There are three types of voles that can be found in the Toolik area, the northern red-backed vole, the arctic vole, and the singing vole. While they may be small, they play a big role in the health of the ecosystem they live in. Voles are a fundamental prey species in the tundra food chain which means they are a major link between the energy and nutrition in vegetation and the energy and nutrition needed by their predators.

Team Vole's Method

So how do you catch a vole? First, you prepare a "sandwich" of paper towels and peanut butter and then it gets cut into small squares to bait the traps. The types of traps that they use are called Sherman traps. The bait and a bit of nesting material is placed inside and the trap is set.

Signs of vole activity, like scat piles, tussock burrows, or vegetation mats, help to determine placement of the traps.

The traps are marked with flags and are checked every 4-6 hours around the clock. If a vole is in the trap more than that, the instance of trap deaths increases.

Unfortunately, Matt, Megan and I found empty traps. If there is a capture, I have been invited to go to the experimental enclosures at Imnavait Creek to see them be processed and I will be sharing that in a new blog. I confident that Team Vole will have successful trapping session and I will report back with an update!