Dispatches From The Field

15 September, 2003 -- Shaun Dunn

Aiza Albus? (Where is Albus?)

Part of our research here in Madagascar is to collar fossas and see where and when they travel to and fro, as well as keep track of their activity. But this task becomes increasingly difficult when your animal travels outside the range of your telemetry equipment.

Over the course of this summer we collared a fossa named Albus and now it seems that he has gone missing, or at least on an extraordinary “walkabout.” Fred (a Malagasy student working with the fossa team for the past 4 years) and I have been looking for Albus for three weeks now with no luck. We have searched all of our regular trails, as well as other trails in the area. We have even made a few of our own trails while trying desperately to locate Albus! Overall in the past three weeks, Fred and I have hiked over 80 kilometers in search of our missing fossa, without any sign of him.

Hopefully in the near future we will locate Albus so we can continue our research and stop all of our wandering around! But in the meantime we are having a good time discovering new trails and seeing new areas of Ankarafantsika. During our searching we have even found a few new places to look for fossa in! But that will have to wait until next year. Keep checking back as we’ll keep you posted on our search for Albus!