Woylies from woe to go and back again

WHERE in the world are all the woylies?

MUST CREDIT: Martin Harvey/WWF... Bettongia penicillata Brush-tailed bettong Nocturnal marsupial, endangered Australia Pictu...

WHERE in the world are all the woylies?

These lightning-fast furballs are disappearing so rapidly that they may become extinct in the wild, surviving only behind electric fences on reserves or in zoos.

The crash of the woylie, known also as the brush-tailed bettong, is one of the biggest mysteries in conservation today.

In Perth this week, WWF-Australia and the WA Department of Parks and Wildlife brought together experts from across Australia to consider why numbers have dropped by 90 per cent in seven years.

The story is doubly depressing because woylies were once the pin-up species for conservation success. In 1996, they were the first Australian mammal to come off the threatened species list after fox-baiting in Western Australia’s southwest forests. “From just a few hundred woylies in the 1960s, we managed to help the species reach around 200,000 in less than 40 years,” said WA Parks and Wildlife research scientist Adrian Wayne.

“But … they are now one of Australia’s most critically endangered marsupials.”

Lee Skerratt, an epidemiologist from James Cook University, is studying records of scattered populations.

“The decline can only be due to increased mortality in adults, since there are no areas that the animals are moving to,” Dr Skerratt said.

“We certainly expect to see some spirited debate.”

Possible causes of woylie loss include changes to predator baiting regimes, like the type of bait or frequency of baiting.

“Or it may be that a higher-order predator like foxes has ­declined, and left a space for cats to become more abundant.

“Perhaps these animals are depleting resources, but there’s no real evidence of this.”

Blood parasites and disease are another possibility.

Woylies once lived across much of the Australian continent, turning over tonnes of soil and leaf litter in search of insects and fungi.

An “insurance population” of more than 400 woylies is pro­tected in a $1.5 million enclosure at Perup Nature Reserve in the state’s southwest.