CONSERVATION CONSERVATION
Victoria s
ROCK STARS
Shy and elusive yet incredibly agile, the Brush-tailed Rock-wallaby is a unique species worth fighting for. WORDS Jo
Stewart
Safe keeping •
As shy creatures, rock wallabies need a spacious, quiet environment to roam and breed.
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Twenty-four rock wallabies now call Tidbinbilla home; as the population grows, these rock wallabies will be reintroduced into the wild throughout the Australian Capital Territory and Victoria.
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Zoos Victoria is currently working with the Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve team to create a second predatorfree fenced-site breeding habitat that can hold up to 100 of these magnificent macropods. The new 125-hectare space has 5.2 kilometres of predatorexclusion fencing in place.
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ith striking features, long eyelashes and a multicoloured coat, the Brush-tailed Rock-wallaby is one of Australia’s cutest native species. While this marsupial registers highly on the adorable scale, there’s another less enviable list it’s found itself on. “They’re the most critically endangered species of any mammal in Victoria,” explains Dr Marissa Parrott, reproductive biologist with the Wildlife Conservation and Science team at Zoos Victoria. “Early last century, Brush-tailed Rock-wallabies were thought to be extinct in Victoria. They were rediscovered in the 1930s when small populations were found in East Gippsland and the Grampians.” Like many native species, these small creatures (which generally weigh less than eight kilograms) are threatened due to habitat loss and predation by cats and foxes. They were also hunted for their fur in the 1800s. As a result, fewer than 50 Brush-tailed Rock-wallabies can be found in the wild in Victoria, with small populations in Snowy River National Park and Grampians Gariwerd National Park.
Crepuscular by nature (meaning they are most active at dusk and dawn), these herbivorous marsupials live in gorges and rocky habitats and have an impressive ability to climb and jump. “They’re almost acrobatic. They have a long tail that helps them to balance and granulated feet, which give them a good grip to get around rocky crevices,” says Marissa. Marissa started her career at Zoos Victoria more than 10 years ago, working as a Zoo Keeper, including with these wallabies, at Healesville Sanctuary. She says that the work being done by Zoos Victoria and its partners is essential to the long-term survival of the species. The revenue made from memberships directly helps to fund programs that allow Zoos Victoria to protect threatened species, like the Brush-tailed Rock-wallaby. Zoos Victoria aims to boost the species’ numbers by supporting captive breeding and the release of captive-bred wallabies into the wild. “A captive breeding program is often the only insurance we have against animals going extinct,” says Marissa. “By creating new populations in fox- and cat-free
