Intrepid rangers carry wallabies in backpacks to new home
Rangers have carried five captive-bred brush-tailed rock-wallabies down the steep cliffs of Snowy River National Park’s Little River Gorge – in backpacks!
The brush-tailed rock-wallabies were transported and released into the East Gippsland national park as part of a genetic rescue mission.
“Having a wallaby that weighs between four and eight kilograms wriggling around on your back is a pretty surreal feeling, especially when it takes two or three hours to get into where you have to release them,” Parks Victoria ranger Jo Durrant, who was part of the mission, told Australian Geographic.
“It’s Victoria’s deepest gorge, about 500m deep. It’s super rugged, super remote, and pretty hard going. If you’re lucky you get a light one [wallaby], but if you’re not so lucky you get a beefy male!
“We give them a bit of apple, and they’re usually pretty calm just sitting there in the backpack eating the apple for most of the journey. But every now and then, if you stop, they wriggle around a bit.”
Critically endangered
The brush-tailed rock-wallaby (Petrogale penicillata) is one of 17 species of rock-wallaby. They were once abundant across south-eastern Australia, including in New South Wales and Queensland, but after being hunted for decades after colonisation, and more recently suffering predation by introduced foxes and cats, populations have plummeted.
The species is now classified as critically endangered in Victoria, with only 80 individuals left in just two wild populations – in the Grampians (Gariwerd) National Park, and in Little River Gorge.
Precious genetics
With such small wild populations remaining in Victoria, limited genetic diversity and inbreeding are major threats to the species’ wild survival. Parks Victoria says the tiny size and isolation of the eastern Victorian population means it’s at risk of genetic collapse.
All five brush-tailed rock-wallabies released into the remote gorge were bred at Mt Rothwell, a wildlife sanctuary managed by the Odonata Foundation east of Melbourne, as part of a larger program of genetic research and breeding coordinated by the southern brush-tailed rock-wallaby recovery team. It’s the sixth such relocation in the past 10 years.
“The genetic work conducted at Mt Rothwell ensures that the fitness and adaptive resilience of those animals released into the wild are preserved, giving them the best possible chance of survival,” Matt Singleton, chief operating officer at Odonata, told Australian Geographic.
“Animals were chosen to boost genetic diversity within the East Gippsland population, and only those that met specific health criteria were considered. A select mix of males and females was chosen to give the best chance of supporting the breeding population.
“At Mt Rothwell the wallabies range across hundreds of hectares of rocky terrain and woodland. This environment allows them to retain their natural wild instincts while being safe from predators.
“To know that individuals raised in this setting are now helping to strengthen populations in East Gippsland is a powerful sign that our efforts are making a real difference.”
Carers of the mountain
Rangers from the local Gunaikurnai Land and Waters Aboriginal Corporation were involved in the rock-wallaby relocation.
Gunaikurnai elder Uncle David ‘Buzzy’ Hewat provided cultural advice to the project and told Australian Geographic the brush-tailed rock-wallaby has great significance in traditional knowledge shared with his family.
“It plays a big part on the mountain as one of the carers of the mountain. She looks after the mountain on our behalf spiritually, and connects us to the mountain.
“We lived in harmony. The wallabies and us were all as one and we shared the mountain as a family. If you’ve got members of your family that are missing, you miss them.
“It’s about being connected to the land. So, the more of them there are, the healthier we are and the healthier the Country is. This work is a long time coming.”
Ongoing monitoring
The moment the rock-wallabies were released from the backpacks into their new home was the highlight of the mission for Parks Victoria ranger Jo Durrant.
“It’s so good. It never gets old,” Durrant said.
“Almost every time, they take a minute and then they jump a few steps forward and look back at you. It’s almost like they’re saying, ‘What the hell was that?’ And then they hop off and hop up a cliff you’d have no hope of getting up. It’s pretty special.”
The brush-tailed rock-wallaby population – and their predators – are now being monitored through cameras installed at the release sites by local East Gippsland ecological consultancy Wildlife Unlimited.
“We’ll be retrieving these cameras in coming months for an insight into the progress of the new recruits,” Wildlife Unlimited field ecologist and relocation project manager Willow Bourke told Australian Geographic.
“It’s really rewarding to be able to witness their first look around in their new habitat and see their instincts kick in.
“Currently, the population is so small that it’s sensitive to predation, bushfire, disease and genetic decline. With a promising survival of 13 joeys this autumn, I hope that the population size continues to increase to a self-sustaining level, when intensive management of threats and population monitoring is no longer as necessary.
“I’d love to be able to walk into Little River Gorge and other parts of the species’ historic range in the future and spot a brush-tailed rock-wallaby, or maybe even a few, basking in the afternoon sun.”
