Elliott Trapping

Elliott traps are also called aluminium box traps. They have a door that is triggered to shut after an animal enters the trap and steps on the trigger plate. Elliott traps are commonly used to capture small-sized mammals and reptiles.

Elliott traps are usually baited with food that smells tasty to mammals. The bait is put at the back of the trap so that the animal has to fully enter the trap to reach it. When the animal enters the trap and steps on a trigger plate, its weight triggers the door to shut, trapping it inside.  

Elliott trapping must involve people who are experienced with trapping, handling and measuring mammals and reptiles, and proper training and endorsement by a qualified practitioner is essential. Elliott trapping also usually needs to have the appropriate scientific licences and animal ethics approvals.

Why are Elliott traps useful?

Get a close up look: When animals are caught in an Elliott trap, you can learn more about that particular individual that you can’t learn from less invasive methods like camera monitoring. You can confirm identification, weigh and measure them, check if they are male or female, see how healthy they are and if they are breeding, and collect samples.

Track them over time: You can identify individual animals with technology like microchips. If you do Elliott trapping at the same place on different occasions over a long time, you can see how individuals and the population change over time.

Get the full picture: While other methods like camera traps, track counts and audio recorders can show you what animals look or sound like or where they live, Elliott trapping can help you gather more details about an entire population. You can estimate how big the population is, learn about the population health and how they are moving or using Country.  

What can Elliott traps monitor?

Elliott traps can monitor the small to medium-sized mammals and reptiles living on Country.

They are also useful for trapping arboreal mammals.

What can you learn?

Using Elliott traps, you can learn about the different species of mammal and reptile living in an area and check on the health of individual animals. By monitoring the same places, over many years, you can see if there are changes in which species live there (biodiversity) and changes in population size and health. You can also learn about where animals live and which types of habitat they are using (occupancy), which can be a simpler way to track changes in a population.  

What can’t you learn?

Elliott traps aren’t good for monitoring larger mammals, birds, frogs or insects, even though these  animals might still  go into an Elliott trap.

Elliott traps are also not useful for monitoring some mammals or reptiles if they are:

• too big to fit inside the Elliott trap, like wallabies or bigger goannas
• too light to trigger the Elliott trap, like small skinks
• mostly awake during the day, like Numbats
• not interested in baits/lures

Elliott traps shouldn’t be used to monitor mammals that get capture myopathy. Capture myopathy happens when the stress of being caught causes an animal to become sick or die, sometimes even after it has been released. Capture myopathy is common in some species of kangaroo and wallaby but you should talk to an expert to find out if the animals you might capture are known to get capture myopathy.

Using Elliott traps the Right-way

Elliott trapping must involve people who are experienced with trapping, handling and measuring mammals. It is a good idea to talk to an experienced professional if you are thinking about running a cage trapping survey – they may be able to give you advice on what species you will expect to catch, what disease or health issues you need to think about, how many traps and nights you will need, what licences and permits you need to apply for, and what training or experience is needed.

Elliott traps are invasive, meaning you disturb any captured animal and its daily life. It is also more stressful for the animal than methods that don’t involve capturing and handling the animal, like camera monitoring or spotlighting. You should consider whether there is another method that will cause less disturbance and provide you with the information you need.

REMEMBER! Methods like microchipping and taking genetic samples can be highly invasive and when done poorly can result in severe injury or even death to an animal.  Proper training and endorsement by a qualified practitioner is essential.

REMEMBER! Any time you do work that might disturb or interfere with native animals and vegetation, particularly threatened species, you need to check with the state authorities to see if you need any approvals, such as scientific licences or animal ethics committee permits.

If you need information that you can only learn from Elliott trapping, identify ways in which you can minimise the impact on animals, like:

• trap for as few nights as possible to get the data you need
• avoid trapping during breeding seasons
• avoid trapping in extreme weather (hot or cold)
• check traps very early each day or even at night
• check traps more frequently through the night
• close traps during the day to avoid exposing nocturnal animals to daytime conditions
• close traps if an animal is caught too many nights in a row
• close traps if a female with dependent young is caught
• handle the animals as little as possible (only collect the data you need)

There are several different sizes of Elliot trap and it is important to select the right size for the target species. The two most common sizes are:

• Large Elliott traps (approx. 15 cm x 15 cm x 46 cm) are useful for trapping medium-sized mammals like bandicoots.
• Medium Elliott traps (approx. 9 cm x 10 cm x 33 cm) are most commonly used. They are useful for trapping most small-sized mammals (up to 250 g) and some reptiles. They also called size A.

Elliott traps should be safe for animals:

• Different businesses manufacture this style of trap, so it is important to select brands that make traps of high quality and operate correctly.
• Before setting them up, make sure they are safe by checking that they have nothing that might hurt an animal. Make sure to sand down any sharp edges.
• When setting them up make sure that they are not near ant nests and that animals are shaded and protected from weather. This usually means putting the trap under vegetation like a spinifex or small shrub. Extra protection from weather is sometimes needed, such as placing corflute material or leaf litter over the traps as extra shading, adding fleece or leaf litter inside the trap as insulation, or wrapping the back half of the trap in plastic wrap as protection from rain and wind.

Elliott traps can be modified in certain ways, as long as it does not impede the treadle or door of the trap and does not have any welfare implications. Some common modifications include:

• Traps can be placed in trees by securing them to wooden platforms or flat and sturdy branches to target arboreal mammals.
• Traps can be placed inside PVC tubing or wire-open cage traps with excluder doors to stop non-target species getting to the trap.
• A locking mechanism can be attached to the traps to stop arboreal mammals like phascogales opening the door from the inside. A metal tab is attached to the outside of the door so that it overlaps with the roof lip.

The type of bait used is based on the type of mammals and reptiles you are trying to catch. Universal bait (a ball of peanut butter and oats) is used for most Elliot trapping surveys, but a different type of bait can be used if you want to trap a specific species. Remember that fish or meat-based lures can attract more reptiles and dasyurid species like phascogales, but it also increases the risk of ants which are a welfare issue and therefore should only be used in specific circumstances.

Small terrestrial vertebrate monitoring with Elliott traps

Small-sized mammals and reptiles can be monitored with Elliott traps to find out what species are living on Country (inventory), where they are living (occupancy), how many there are (abundance/population size) and how healthy they are.

You can learn how to use Elliott traps for monitoring small terrestrial vertebrates using the Standard Operating Procedure for Terrestrial Vertebrate Monitoring with Elliott Traps and watching this video:This SOP assumes that each trapping team has a team leader who is experienced with trapping, handling and processing animals. It therefore does not provide instructions for procedures like microchipping, measuring, taking genetic samples, or dealing with ejected pouch young, venomous or dangerous by-catch, or euthanasia. The following website has some additional SOPs that may be of use: https://www.dbca.wa.gov.au/science/animal-ethics-and-use-animals