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From pest to salvation of species
The Daily Telegraph, Edition 1 - State
THU 06 NOV 2003, Page 024
By LISA MILLER
A RADICAL plan to save the endangered brush-tailed rock wallaby will also help rid New Zealand of an unwanted pest.
The wallabies are found in only a small number of pockets in NSW and Victoria, and experts believe less than 1000 of them remain in the wild.
However across the Tasman, on Kawau Island in the inner Hauraki Gulf, the introduced wallabies have run rampant, over-running the island and forcing farmers to abandon their properties in the 1970s.
Now an Australian environmental group has come up with a plan to trap the 30-40 rock wallabies resident on Kawau and transport them back to Australia to establish a new colony.
The South Australian-based Earth Sanctuaries Foundation has launched the "Bring our Wallabies Home'' campaign in an effort to raise half of the $150,000 needed for the project.
Program manager Bruce Jackson said the trapping team would travel to the island in late November and would stay at least a month.
He said the wallabies, which were introduced to the island in the late 19th century, had flourished in their new environment, to the detriment of New Zealand's native flora and fauna.
"The trust that manages the island wants to get rid of all the wallabies by the end of next year," he said.
"We saw this as an opportunity to build up their numbers back in Australia which was really too good to be missed.
"Instead of just having them poisoned and die, we could instead establish a lovely colony."
There are two other species of wallaby on Kawau Island -- the parma and the tammar -- and an earlier capture and repatriation program for the tammar species had proven a success, Mr Jackson said.
"The brush-tailed rock wallaby is now only found in a few very small pockets in the Blue Mountains, around Canberra and along the Great Dividing Range into Victoria," he said. "If we're successful in capturing the New Zealand wallabies we'll be introducing to the Earth Sanctuary's Little River reserve which operates between Melbourne and Geelong.
"This is a fenced-off, vermin-free area which contains some granite outcrops for them, and hopefully they will prosper and increase in numbers."
If the program is a success it is hoped that members of the Little River colony will eventually be repatriated to other areas of NSW and Victoria to form further colonies.
The wallabies are expected to arrive by the end of the year.
They will then spend six months in quarantine at Waterfall Springs wildlife reserve near Gosford before being released into the Little River reserve and then into the wild.
For more information about the project, or to make a donation, visit www.esf.org.au
or phone 08 8370 9422.
Well travelled trouble
HOW did these cute animals become such a pest so far from home?
The blame can been laid squarely on the shoulders of former South Australian governor Sir George Grey.
Sir George, who was later governor and premier of NZ, bought the 2000ha Kawau Island around 1862, seems to have had a mania for stocking it with animals he came across in his travels.
They included three species of wallaby, kookaburras, zebra and antelope. The wallabies adapted so well they foiled attempts to establish farms on the island.
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