Cardiff Uni plea for volunteers

Cardiff University are hoping to recruit volunteers to help with otter spraint collections - can you help?

Background
During national surveys in the 80s and 90s in Wales, spraint from some catchments (including the Teifi, Tywi, Wye, Cleddau and Severn) was collected. Initial analysis of some of these samples indicates a marked drop in eel remains between the two decades, and a shift to other prey species.

Cardiff Uni would like to repeat spraint collection on all the catchments for which we have historic spraint collections to analyse prey remains and identify both the decrease in reliance on eels (and how this varies between catchments) and what other species are making up the deficit. For example, is this causing increased pressure on other vulnerable species like amphibians, or on resources such as stillwater fisheries?

Practicalities
The hope is to collect spraint this summer; there are details of exactly where spraint was collected in the past, so they want to repeat this as closely as possible.

Funding applications are currently being written to cover costs such as volunteer travel. It will help the funding bid to have a good list of collaborators, so if you think you might like to get involved, please let me know asap. Otherwise, watch this space for more details!