Harriet Harte and a Woylie springing from the bag. © Brad Leue
The next chapter in Australian Wildlife conservancy’s (AWC) groundbreaking Mammal Restoration Project commenced last week, when over 100 endangered Woylies (Brush-tailed Bettongs) were released outside a feral predator-free fenced area in Western Australia’s Wheatbelt region. The translocation sets a new standard for the protection of native animals in Australia and bolsters AWC’s position as a global leader in wildlife conservation.
Woylies were absent from the Wheatbelt for over 100 years, until 2015, when AWC began reintroduction of 162 individuals from three source sites to a 7,830-hectare fenced area at Mt Gibson Wildlife Sanctuary on Badimia Country. The fenced area was cleared of all foxes and cats – the primary driver of native mammal extinctions and ongoing declines in Australia – giving the Woylies a safe space to comfortably grow their population.
A decade later, and with a population now estimated at over 1,000 individuals, AWC captured and released a small cohort of individuals from inside to outside the safe haven, allowing them to begin establishing a self-sustaining population ‘beyond the fence’, taking the restoration project into the whole landscape scale.
“By taking a big leap forward in conservation, we’re turning back the clock on wildlife extinctions,” said Tim Allard, AWC Chief Executive. “We’re looking to establish populations of locally extinct species in larger landscapes. While it is risky to release a predator-prone species such as the Woylie into an area where cats are present, we sometimes have to take well-considered risks to advance conservation. We have evidence from previous releases of other species, and from monitoring the outcomes of predator control on the release site, to suggest that Woylies have a good chance of establishing outside the fence at Mt Gibson.”
Woylies restored to the Wheatbelt
The reintroduction of the Woylie to Mt Gibson in 2015 kicked off the initial phase of AWC’s ambitious Mammal Restoration Project which set out to restore 10 locally-extinct species to the sanctuary over a 10-year period – this set an as yet unbeaten benchmark as the largest number of species ever restored to a single conservation site in Australia.
“Mt Gibson is an incredibly important site where at least 15 mammal species have gone locally extinct in the last century,” explained Dr Amanda Bourne, AWC Regional Ecologist. “Our team has worked extraordinarily hard in the last decade to restore those critical losses at the sanctuary, conducting 55 translocations of just under 1,000 individual animals from 10 different species.”
Woylies proved to be among the most adaptable of the reintroduced species, within the first two years of their arrival, the population rapidly grew, spread out across the exclosure, and some individuals even managed to climb their way out of the fenced area.
“Woylies are one of the great success stories for the sanctuary because once the threat of cats and foxes was removed, they were able to thrive as a population and have even shown good resilience through a recent severe drought in the region,” said Dr Bourne.
Despite being released inside the safety of the feral predator-free area, some Woylies took it upon themselves to explore the world beyond the 7,830-hectare fenced area. As early as 2017, some individuals were being found outside the fenced area, and Woylies have been regularly detected outside the fence since 2019, when on-site ecologists deployed motion sensor cameras to monitor outside-fence activities.
“The cameras have picked up multiple females with young in their pouches or at heel, and we caught one Woylie two years in a row. These are all indications that some Woylies are breeding and surviving outside the fence, and that the species is ready for an intentional release.”
Setting a new standard for wildlife conservation
Raising the bar even further for wildlife conservation was last week’s official release of Woylies from inside to outside Mt Gibson’s fenced area. The translocation advanced AWC’s Mammal Restoration Project to the second phase which involves restoring species vulnerable to predation ‘beyond the fence’.
“This program is now reaching new goals for large-scale reintroductions across the country,” added Tim. “To be able to now release animals outside of the safe havens is a huge step forward in reestablishing the faunal assemblage that should be here in the Wheatbelt.”
To give the Woylies the best chance at survival, AWC’s field team have spent the last five years reducing numbers of cats and foxes across 70,000 hectares of land outside the fenced area. Thanks to the team’s efforts, the cat activity level in the supressed area is at 1.7 detections per 100 camera trap nights, the lowest it has been in years.
In preparation for the Woylie release, AWC also trialed the ‘beyond the fence’ strategy with two larger and less cat-susceptible species, the Brushtail Possum (2022) and Chuditch or Western Quoll (2023).
“Releases of both Brushtail Possums and Chuditch have been successful to date, with high rates of survival and successful breeding,” said Dr Bourne. “The success of these releases, together with the ongoing presence of some Woylies outside the exclosure provided the confidence we needed to attempt the release of Woylies outside the exclosure at Mt Gibson, which we hope will be as successful as possums and Chuditch have been.”
Over the next few months, ecologists will closely monitor the Woylies as they adapt to life beyond. A small group of individuals were fitted with radio collars which will be used to track their progress and compare survival inside and outside the fenced area; and the team will run a trapping survey next month.
For more information on AWC’s Mammal Restoration Project at Mt Gibson, click here, and for more information on Mt Gibson Wildlife Sanctuary, click here.
Australian Wildlife Conservancy (AWC) is a global leader in conservation, providing hope for Australia’s wildlife with a science-informed, land management partnership model that delivers high impact results. AWC is a national leader in landscape scale conservation land management, reintroductions of threatened species and the establishment of feral cat and fox-free areas. More information can be found at: www.australianwildlife.org
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