Amanda Cheeseman and colleagues have published a new paper in the journal Landscape Ecology where they analyzed historical records of the 3 North American weasel species over the past century.

Importantly, they highlight key areas of decline for each species, with least weasels exhibiting a 54% decline in suitable habitat since the 1940's. ​

Dr. Kevin Hamed from Virginia Tech recently posted this fascinating video of a least weasel dragging away a recent kill.

Following the 2023 International Weasel Monitoring Symposium, a group of weasel experts drafted a global review of weasel monitoring in the journal Mammal Review.  The review not only overviews the history of the most common non-invasive techniques, but highlights the benefits, shortcomings and areas in need of further development.  An important benchmark in weasel monitoring!

The review is available open access through this link.

New article in The Conversation about how COP 15 biodiversity conversations can be improved by focusing less on large charismatic carnivores like pandas or tigers, and more on small carnivores that are excellent sentinels of ecosystem structure and function.

Kevin Hamed had a mink interested in his Mostela box placed near campus at Virginia Tech.   

Dr. Kevin Hamed and his students are the first to trial Mostela camera trap boxes for least weasels.  Check out their footage from Virginia.

Dr. Hamed also has published updated information on the distrubtion of least weasels in Virginia, which can be found in the journal Southeastern Naturalist here:https://bioone.org/journals/Southeastern-Naturalist/volume-15/issue-2/058.015.0205/Distribution-of-the-Least-Weasel-iMustela-nivalis-i-in-the/10.1656/058.015.0205.short

Dr. Hamed has found that Mostela also work for long-tailed weasels...

​https://www.themeateater.com/conservation/wildlife-management/what-happened-to-north-americas-weasels

Once again, Alabama is pioneering the use of public sightings to improve their understanding of small carnivore distributions in their state.  Alabama had great success with improving their understanding of spotted skunk distribution in the state with public outreach over the past few years.  This time they are focusing on long-tailed weasels.

Other states like South Carolina have similarly picked up this valuable outreach tool.

​http://www.european-mustelid-colloquium.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/34EuropeanMustelidColloquiumProgramme.pdf