In May we paused new construction in the Quoll Crossing Bridges program on Bruny Island for six months. The decision was ours, it was deliberate, and it is worth explaining, because pausing a program that donors fund is not a thing we take lightly.
The short version: our camera-trap data was telling us something we did not want to hear. Of the four rope bridges installed on the island's main road in 2023 and 2024, two were carrying steady quoll traffic and two were carrying almost none. A crossing that nothing uses is not a crossing; it is a structure.
Rather than build a fifth bridge and hope, we stopped. Over the winter the field team and an engineer from the Tasmanian Department of State Growth re-walked all four sites with the footage in hand. The two low-traffic bridges turned out to share a problem: the canopy approach on one side had been cleared for a firebreak after installation, and a quoll will not commit to a rope bridge it has to cross open ground to reach.
The fix is not complicated — supplementary plantings and a relocated approach pole — and it is cheaper than a new bridge. Construction resumes in November with the two existing bridges modified and one new site chosen on the revised criteria. We would rather report a pause and a reason than a count of structures.