Brush Tail Rock Wallaby – Page 2 – Friends of Grampians Gariwerd

Brush-Tailed Rock Wallaby News

October was a busy month for those involved with Brush-tailed Rock wallabies. Camera work has proven useful in monitoring our first wild born pouch young Shadow’s progress. Photos showed him hopping in and out of his mother’s pouch and exploring while his mother feeds.

Only half of the population was trapped in our Autumn trapping trip so that there was no risk of trapping Shadow. Three females and a male were trapped. They were all healthy and a little male pouch young was found in animal 118’s pouch. He was about a month old at the time and a very good sign that the population is settling into their new home.

On the 20th of October five more wallabies were released into the colony. Two males and three females joined the 13 animals already at the Moora Moora creek site. The animals were fitted with GPS collar with a VHF … Read the rest

First Brush-tailed Rock Wallaby pouch young in the Grampians

The first wild-born pouch young for the population of captive bred Brush-tailed Rock Wallabies reintroduced into the Grampians National Park in 2008 was discovered in the April trapping work. The 10 day old newborn brings hope for a critically endangered species facing extinction in Victoria.

Department of Sustainability and Environment Biodiversity Officer Emily Beddgood said the research team was ecstatic to find the pouch young during routine trapping.
“It’s very exciting. The birth shows that the Brush-tailed Rock Wallabies are adapting to their new habitat and it is the first sign we have had that they are on the way to becoming a second self sustaining population of animals in Victoria,” she said. There is an existing population of about 20 animals in remote East Gippsland.

Ms Bedggood said animals were regularly monitored using radio collars, remote surveillance cameras and were trapped for health checks every six months. “We started … Read the rest

BRUSH TAILED ROCK WALLABIES UPDATE April 2010

Emily Bedggood

2010 is looking like an optimistic year for the Brush-tailed Rock Wallaby program. There have been no deaths found since November 2009. One of the un-collared animals has been found through scat analysis which tests for DNA. This makes us more confident that the other 2 un-collared animals are still there even though they haven’t been photographed for 6 months.

We have just finished helping an honours student from the University of Adelaide undertaking a study looking at individual animal’s home range structure and their movements after release. Jenny Proctor has been doing extensive radio tracking with the help from Conservation Volunteers Australia, Parks Victoria and the Department of Sustainability and Environment. She is due to finish her project and submit a thesis mid year which should show some interesting results.

At the moment breeding is our biggest hurdle. So far we have found no evidence of reproduction … Read the rest

Brushtailed Rock-wallabies Report Dec 2009

Five more wallabies have been released at the same site. Unfortunately one of these was recently found dead, with some indication of predation after death. Cat? Fox? There has also been no sighting of the pouch young in one of the first batch released, which is disappointing. On the other hand all the others are doing well. They seem to have separated into two groups, but both groups are still close to the release site. There have been some problems with their collars but all are working now. Stateline had an excellent segment on the release and it’s still available from the SA website: “Get the latest Brush-tailed Rock-wallaby”:http://www.abc.net.au/stateline/sa/content/2006/s2716673.htm update on Stateline… Read the rest

BRUSH TAILED ROCK-WALLABY PROJECT CHANGES

FAREWELL TO TONY & EMILY

FOGGs also want to say thank you and goodbye to Tony and Emily. We have had Tony present us with much informatiion on the animals, we have helped in exploring possible habitat for other colonies, both before and after the re-introduction project, we have supported their work by donating a microscope to help with the research into the diet of the animals, we campaigned to have their portraits on our registration labels, we have explored other ways of getting more support.It is sad to see Tony and Emily go. We hope they both have good memories of their time here. And we hope that the colony becomes not just viable, but thriving. It was always realised that there was a likelihood of losing animals in an experiment like this, despite so much care going into it. The collars on the animals allow park staff to … Read the rest

Victorian Brush-tailed Rock Wallaby Newsletter

DSE publish a newsletter called "The Shadow" which is specifically focused on the recovery of the Brush-tailed Rock Wallaby. The November 2008 issue (number20) feature story is on the trial reintroduction of ten Brush-tailed Rock Wallabies in the Grampians National Park.

You can get your copy here (in 2 parts):

_Halls Gap Primary School_… Read the rest

Happy Families

We are still following the progress of the brush-tailed rock-wallabies and all are still alive. We are very glad.

They are not going very far from the release site and are staying with their families. We think that they must like the site the team chose for them and that they want to stay there. We sure hope so.

Some of the collars that were not working are working now so Tony is happy.

We think that the fox baiting program must have been pretty successful as they have not had any brush-tailed rock-wallabies to eat!!!

Halls Gap Primary School… Read the rest

Collar and Cameras

So far all of the brush-tailed rock wallabies are still alive and not going very far.

Three of the collars are not working but they still think that the wallabies are ok.

They are all still going down to the creek to drink.

The release team have put cameras out in the park to try and get some photos of the wallabies.

The cameras go off when something moves in front of them. There are some photos of wallabies and we hope to have some to put on the website soon.

Halls Gap Primary School… Read the rest

Halls Gap Primary School and the BTRW

Hi everyone,

We are the prep, one, two class of Halls Gap Primary School and with our teacher Frau Stoffel we are going to write a daily update for everyone about the Brush tailed rock wallabies that have just been released into our National Park.

Jack is in grade 2 and his dad is Tony Corrigan one of the release team. Through Tony and Jack we will have daily updates that we will add to this website.

As of Saturday all of the wallabies were accounted for and moving around. The Tidbinbilla family are not as active as our local lot. We think that maybe they are tired after all of their travelling to get here.

The wallabies have been moving to the creek to drink, but other than that, they are staying close to the release site. We are all excited that so far everything is going extremely well … Read the rest

VOTE FOR THE BRUSH TAIL ROCK WALLABY

Vote for the Brush Tail rock wallaby
The Victorian government is having a competition on what endangered species they are going to put on the vehicle registration labels next year. Of course, the Brush Tailed Rock Wallaby is on the list and you all need to vote for it…..please!!!. Tell your friends, kids, schools, relatives etc etc etc to vote. Go to www.dse.vic.gov.au and follow the links to ‘Plants and Animals’,
‘Threatened Species Competition’ … Read the rest