ZooNooz Article - SEPTEMBER 2007

On the comeback trail

Peter Harlow reports on the fluctuating fortunes of one of the smaller members of the kangaroo family.

Photographs Scott Howard and Mark O'Riordan

On January 24, 1798, John Price went hunting in the Nepean area west of Sydney and came home hungry and empty handed. "We saw nothing strange except a few rock kangaroos with long black bushy tails," he wrote. At the time Brush-tailed Rockwallabies were a common sight along the rocky ranges and western slopes of the Great Divide, from southern Queensland down through the Snowy Mountains to the Grampians and Gippsland area of Victoria. As they were regarded as a pest to the grazing industry, between 1884 and 1914 bounties were paid on over half a million wallabies in NSW alone. The thick, glossy coat was also highly valued in the fur trade; one Sydney wool broker reported trading over 93,000 skins in 1908. Their abundance seemed to be endless.

Mostly restricted to steep and rocky wilderness areas, even intensive hunting at first seemed to have little effect on the total population of this common species. The balance was probably tipped however with the introduction of the red fox in the 1860s. The fox is a small and agile predator which, unlike the larger dingo, can capture these small wallabies even in steep country. Although Brush-tailed Rock-wallabies live in colonies on cliffs and in steep, rocky country, they still need to move down to grassed areas at night and in the early morning to feed, and here they were even easier prey. Both the fox and the rock-wallaby are similar in size, and weigh about the same at five to seven kilograms.

Throughout the twentieth century, biologists reported one after another of these wallaby populations becoming extinct. What was once an almost continuous population along the Great Dividing Range became fragmented into scattered, isolated colonies. Today less than a dozen wild individuals survive in Victoria, the Kosciusko population is long gone, and the Blue Mountains population is down to a few hundred animals. Less than a thousand individuals survive south of the Hunter River today, and the steep and rugged valleys of the New England tableland region remain the only stronghold of this species.

Health check at Jenolan Caves

Most Sydney residents familiar with these wallabies would have seen them during a visit to the Jenolan Caves. A free-ranging but tame population has been a popular tourist attraction here since the 1920s, but the continuing decline in numbers forced a decision to capture most of them in the 1960s. This colony is today breeding well in several large enclosures built around cliffs and rocky outcrops - not so much to keep the rock-wallabies in as to keep the foxes out. Taronga veterinarian Larry Vogelnest has been assisting on this project for many years, making regular visits to carry out health checks on this valuable colony. Intensive fox baiting of the area for many years plus the wallabys' population increase due to captive breeding recently allowed small numbers to be released back into the wild.

A consortium of zoos and wildlife parks today holds and breeds many captive individual Brush-tailed Rockwallabies, specifically the genetic type from the southern end of the range. Captive-bred offspring from this population will ultimately be released to augment current populations or to start new colonies in carefully selected areas. Taronga has recently joined this group, and we now have two males and four females on display. The new animals were bred at Waterfall Springs Wildlife Sanctuary, a private wildlife park just north of Sydney which holds over 70 individuals. Their 33 founding animals were captured in 2002 from a feral population introduced to Kawau Island, New Zealand, in the 1870s. Here they lived and multiplied happily, and recent DNA sleuthing has revealed that their ancestors came from the Blue Mountains area just west of Sydney.

When you visit our six new Brushtailed Rock-wallabies at Taronga be patient - they are small, shy and well camouflaged animals. On cold days however they can't avoid the temptation to sit in a sheltered sunny spot and doze, but when disturbed their explosive burst of speed is always impressive. To watch a rock-wallaby spring effortlessly up and across a seemingly vertical cliff is one of nature's wonders, and hopefully one that more of us can experience in the future as wild populations slowly make a comeback.

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