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

Several national and international news outlets have written about the recent paper on North American weasel status.

https://www.postandcourier.com/news/new-clemson-university-led-study-reveals-a-declining-weasel-population-in-north-america/article_0c5ad82e-10a3-11ec-a58e-378863f4bf0d.html

https://www.ecori.org/natural-resources/2021/11/11/local-weasel-population-difficult-to-assess-as-species-declines-nationwide

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-9876943/Least-weasel-worlds-smallest-carnivore-disappearing-experts-dont-know-why.html

https://wyominguntrapped.org/news/local-weasel-population-difficult-to-assess-as-national-study-finds-species-in-decline/

A link to the paper can be found here:  

​https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0254387