Remote monitoring uses footprints, radio telemetry and trail cameras to follow the activities of wild animals without detaining them. Footprint tracking tunnels provide a simple and cheap method of monitoring the presence/absence of small mammals. The field protocols have been refined and standardised over decades of experience into an informative tool for use at landscape scale. Radio telemetry for small mustelids is more difficult, because of their tube-shaped bodies, but radio tracking data are especially revealing. Telemetry data are not confined to fixed locations (as livetraps, tracking tunnels or cameras are) so can follow marked animals to unexpected places, so long as they stay in range. Radio locations can define home ranges, which is useful information when planning control of ground pests. Equipping stoats and ferrets with radios before a control operation can define the number removed by professional trappers or by secondary poisoning. Remote cameras can identify nest predators, incursions onto islands, and breaches in pest-exclusion fences, but small, fast-moving mustelids may still be missed unless detained by an attractive lure. An advanced smart bait dispenser with accompanying detector confirmed that radio-collared ferrets (and probably stoats) need time to engage with human devices.