Western Australia flies in more black-flanked rock-wallabies to help secure much-adored Kalbarri colony

By Mike Sullivan

Adapted from information and transcripts supplied by Western Australia’s Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions (DBCA), DBCA’s public magazine Landscope, WWF-Australia and Wildlife Queensland.

ONE OF Western Australia’s great conservation success stories – relocating healthy and abundant black-flanked rock-wallabies from one region to another, where their numbers had dwindled to the point of being untenable – has opened a heart-warming and educative third chapter.

A few months ago, 44 endangered black-flanked rock-wallabies (Petrogale lateralis lateralis) were carefully captured, loaded and flown by private charter aircraft from a Wheatbelt nature reserve in WA to a spectacular new home at Kalbarri National Park. That is, a ‘new home’ that had been cleared of invasive and dangerous species – a new home that was discovered to have been a favourite ‘old home’ for black-flanked rock-wallabies for thousands of years.

The work of WA’s Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions (DBCA) and World Wildlife Fund (WWF) is an emotional story that Australia wildlife enthusiasts are coming to regard as establishing new benchmarks in how to avert the loss of a treasured species.

This was more than a ‘simple’ rescue mission – it also set clear conservation planning, funding, local community engagement, cultural and scientific parameters for success. Long-term success. Repeatable success. And, hopefully, success adopted and adapted by other regions of Australia, perhaps for species that have come to similar conservation inflection points.

The black-flanked, or black-footed, rock-wallaby is a small and extremely agile species of wallaby that darts among rocky outcrops and caves, making it challenging to find and track.

DBCA’s Parks and Wildlife Service rangers’ recent success in moving 44 rock-wallabies from the Nangeen Hill Nature Reserve in the Wheatbelt to Kalbarri National Park is expected to further bolster the Kalbarri wallaby population. This was a population once thought extinct until feral animal control, through DBCA’s Western Shield program, and translocations enabled wallabies to flourish in Kalbarri once more.

In 2015, a tiny population of black-flanked rock-wallabies was rediscovered in the park by rock climbers, after being thought to be locally extinct for 20 years.

To boost conservation of the species, 72 rock-wallabies were released into the park, from larger healthy populations, between 2016 and 2017. The released animals were initially monitored using radio collars to understand their movements. The collars were later removed and the population has since been monitored using remote cameras.

Nanda Aboriginal Rangers assisted with this translocation and the flight was made possible thanks to the support of WWF-Australia. The success of the Kalbarri rock wallaby program makes it one of WA’s great conservation success stories.

Rock-wallabies continue to be recorded at Kalbarri, including a recent sighting at the skywalk – a considerable distance from the original release sites. The resurgence in rock-wallaby numbers in the park, and the diverse range of wildlife in Kalbarri National Park, has been supported by DBCA’s Western Shield program.

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