Waterfall Springs achieves a milestone in the recovery of the VIC Brush-tailed Rock-wallaby species.

Waterfall Springs is delighted to report on our latest achievement with the Victorian or ‘southern form’ Brush-tailed Rock Wallaby breeding program. Waterfall Springs is custodian to 3 ‘southern’ Brush-tailed Rock-wallabies; 2 female and 1 male. In June of 2007 our females gave birth to 2 joeys; 1 female and 1 male.

The births were officially recorded as number 99 and 100 in the studbook for this species. This has been recognized as a fantastic milestone on the road to recovery for the ‘southern’ Brush-tailed Rock-wallaby listed as critically endangered of extinction with only 20 now remaining in the wild. In fact, numbers for the ‘southern’ Brush-Tailed Rock Wallaby are so low it would be extremely rare to chance across one in the wild – earning them the nickname “The Shadow”.

As a partner of the Victorian Recovery Program for the BTRW ‘southern form’, Waterfall Springs is a participating organisation in the accelerated captive breeding technique known as cross-fostering. This is a highly skilled and delicate technique involving the joey being transferred into the pouch of a surrogate mother so the donor mother is free to breed again.

Our male joey was transferred to Adelaide Zoo to participate in this program and the female joey remains in her mothers pouch at Waterfall Springs.