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2017 West Angelas Ghost Bat Monitoring Roy Hill Vertebrate Fauna Desktop Review 2017 West Angelas Ghost Bat Monitoring Rio Tinto Iron Ore January 2018 Page 0 of 42 2017 West Angelas Ghost Bat Monitoring DOCUMENT STATUS Revision Approved for Issue to Author Review / Approved for Issue No. Name Date B. Dalton 1 Chris Knuckey Morgan O’Connell 05/01/18 J. Symmons 2 Chris Knuckey Brad Durrant J. Symmons 29/01/18 “IMPORTANT NOTE” Apart from fair dealing for the purposes of private study, research, criticism, or review as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part of this report, its attachments or appendices may be reproduced by any process without the written consent of Biologic Environmental Survey Pty Ltd (“Biologic”). All enquiries should be directed to Biologic. We have prepared this report for the sole purposes of Rio Tinto Iron Ore (“Client”) for the specific purpose only for which it is supplied. 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In this note, a reference to loss and damage includes past and prospective economic loss, loss of profits, damage to property, injury to any person (including death) costs and expenses incurred in taking measures to prevent, mitigate or rectify any harm, loss of opportunity, legal costs, compensation, interest and any other direct, indirect, consequential or financial or other loss. Page | 1 2017 West Angelas Ghost Bat Monitoring TABLE OF CONTENTS 1 Introduction ........................................................................................................ 5 1.1 Background ............................................................................................................ 5 1.2 Objectives ............................................................................................................... 5 1.3 Ghost Bat (Macroderma gigas) ............................................................................. 7 1.4 Historical Ghost Bat Occupation ........................................................................ 10 2 Methodology ..................................................................................................... 12 2.1 Project Team ........................................................................................................ 12 2.2 Field Survey .......................................................................................................... 12 2.2.1 Timing and Weather ........................................................................................ 12 2.2.2 Visual Assessment .......................................................................................... 13 2.2.3 Ultrasonic Recordings ...................................................................................... 14 2.2.4 Scat Genetic Analysis ...................................................................................... 14 2.2.5 Scat Hormone Analysis .................................................................................... 15 3 Results .............................................................................................................. 16 3.1 Monitoring Sites and Disturbance ...................................................................... 16 3.2 Ghost Bat Activity ................................................................................................ 18 3.3 Scat Genetic Analysis .......................................................................................... 18 3.3.1 Number of Individuals ...................................................................................... 18 3.3.2 Cave Use ......................................................................................................... 18 3.4 Scat Hormone Analysis ....................................................................................... 21 4 Discussion ........................................................................................................ 22 4.1 Temporal Trends .................................................................................................. 22 4.1.1 West Angelas Population ................................................................................. 22 4.1.2 Cave Usage and Conservation Significance .................................................... 22 4.2 Potential Impacts of Mining ................................................................................. 25 4.3 Survey Limitations ............................................................................................... 26 5 Conclusions ...................................................................................................... 28 6 References ........................................................................................................ 29 7 Appendices ....................................................................................................... 32 Page | 2 2017 West Angelas Ghost Bat Monitoring LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1.1: West Angelas mine site and location of monitoring caves ................................................... 6 Figure 1.2: Ghost Bat distribution and regional records ......................................................................... 9 Figure 2.1: Long-term average and recent climatic data for the Study Area ........................................ 13 Figure 3.1: Disturbance footprint at West Angelas ............................................................................... 17 LIST OF TABLES Table 1.1: Summary of Ghost Bat monitoring at West Angelas from 1979 – 2015 .............................. 10 Table 2.1: Daily weather and moon observations recorded at Marble Bar during the Survey ............. 12 Table 2.2: Song Meter deployment details ........................................................................................... 14 Table 2.3: Allocation of scats collected and analysed from the two sampling periods ......................... 14 Table 3.1: Distance between monitoring caves and mining activity ..................................................... 16 Table 3.2: Individuals recorded between years .................................................................................... 20 Table 3.3: Detection of unique Ghost Bat genotypes by monitoring cave ............................................ 20 Table 3.4: Number and portion of scats with elevated progesterone levels ......................................... 21 Table 4.1: Summary of Ghost Bat records from current and previous surveys* .................................. 24 APPENDICES Appendix A – Scat Genetic Report (Ottewell et al., 2018) .................................................................... 33 Appendix B – Scat Hormone Analysis (Keeley, 2018) .......................................................................... 34 Appendix C – Monitoring Cave Characteristics .................................................................................... 39 Page | 3 2017 West Angelas Ghost Bat Monitoring EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Ghost Bats (Macroderma gigas) have been known to occur within the West Angelas area since 1978, and have been recorded intermittently since this time. This survey, commissioned by Rio Tinto Iron Ore (RTIO), represent the fifth Ghost Bat monitoring survey at West Angelas since the recommencement of the monitoring program in 2012. The overarching objective of the survey was to undertake a Ghost Bat monitoring survey at five caves which have previously been regarded as significant for the species (A1, A2, L2, L3, AA1). The field survey was undertaken during the dry season, between the 17th and 19th October 2017. Survey methods employed during the survey were consistent with previous surveys: conducting visual inspections for individuals and fresh scat material, and conducting ultrasonic recordings. Additional survey techniques, genetic and hormone analysis on scat samples were also employed to better understand Ghost Bat usage at each monitoring
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