SOME PINE VOLE MOVEMENT PATTERNS IN SEVERAL APPLE ORCHARDS IN HENDERSON COUNTY, NORTH CAROLINA

In controlling pine voles in orchards a question often comes up about the distance the voles will move from outside into an orchard where the resident animals have been removed by a control program. There are several possible ways to study this, but at present the closest we can come to an answer is to see how far animals move in live-trapping studies. Naturalists have raised many questions about how to interpret these observations of trapped animals. For example, maybe movements are farther or more frequent into areas which have no resident animals or perhaps the animals that move in are wandering, looking for living space and not nearby residents. The live-trappings studies reported here tell us nothing about these questions. In this study I will summarize movements according to how frequently the animal moved between rows. I have not tried to average these movements or do any kind of statistical study because there are so many unknown and disputed questions in the interpretation of home range