This wallaby is one of seven wallabies making a new home in a Canberra sanctuary. Photo: EPSDD.
Part of Ben Mathews-Hunter’s job is patrolling the fence around the 120-hectare Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve, keeping an eye out for any escapees from a special enclosure.
He’s a project manager and his charges are the endangered brush-tailed rock-wallabies inside the Jedbinbilla Safe Haven, a specially built predator-proof home, creating a “really safe space” that has also been cleared of rabbits, cats, wild pigs and deer.
When it opened in June last year, the reserve was home to eight wallabies. In the months since, the population has grown with the birth of a joey and the addition of seven adults, born through Tidbinbilla’s breeding program.
Ben joined the program shortly before the first release of wallabies into Jedbinbilla, and he says it’s taken a lot of hard work to create the sanctuary.
“There was a lot of landscape surveying to decide where we would have suitable habitat, water sources that would maintain them throughout drought and potential refuges from fire,” he says.
Jedbinbilla isn’t open to the public, and the rangers also keep a distance from the wallabies.
Inside the sanctuary, about 60 cameras watch the wallabies as they forage for food and pick mates.
“They’re not particularly social, but they will settle next to each other. Sometimes you see them interacting on the borders of their territories, which has been great.”
Ben says the arrival of the program’s first (and so far only) joey was a “big moment” that rangers watched closely.
“He’s becoming a lot more independent, and actually spent some time with one of the males that lives nearby, which was really interesting for us to see, because we don’t have heaps of information about their social structures.”
They’re confident more will follow – the reserve is part of Tidbinbilla’s breeding program for the brush-tailed rock-wallaby, which dates to the mid-1990s.
“The numbers in the wild, especially in Victoria, are quite drastic – there’s estimated to be less than 50 in the wild,” Ben says.
“Without intervention, it’s very likely that they would [decline even more] due to inbreeding pressures or random events – for example, bushfires … we could lose them from there very easily.”
Two of the new faces at Jedbinbilla Safe Haven. Photo: ACT Parks and Conservation Service/Facebook.
Ben says the “big challenge” is in making sure Jedbinbilla has enough genetic diversity for a stable population.
A geneticist consults with the program, which is also set to grow even more with another six wallabies in the near future.
“In the early stages [of the breeding program] if an individual male is being very dominant, they can overrepresent their genes,” Ben says.
“As much as we want to try to leave the mate choice up to them, if we decide that we might need to go in and remove an individual for a period of time, or add any more wallabies [we will intervene].”
While the wallabies have found a home in the bush capital, Ben says they’ll leave it soon.
Once the population hits about 100, the rangers will start releasing them from Jedbinbilla and into the wild.
“Even with 100, I don’t know if we would ever see them. They’re just so elusive,” he says.
“It’s incredible to have them in a wild setting in Tidbinbilla and the ACT again. Seeing them living their lives out there, it’s definitely a major step towards establishing potential introductions.”
