Famed Hobart platypuses abandoning burrows and moving upstream due to dry spell

The famed platypuses of the Hobart Rivulet are feeling the heat after Tasmania’s months-long dry spell, with the ‘platypus whisperer’ observing some worrying behaviour.

The Hobart Rivulet Platypus' Pete Walsh has won a Canon grant to continue making a second documentary on two female platypuses. Photo: Hobart Rivulet Platypus

Hobart Rivulet platypuses have abandoned their regular nesting burrows and are moving further downstream to find water after being hit hard by Tasmania’s dry summer and autumn.

Hobart’s platypus whisperer and founder of Hobart Rivulet Platypus foundation Pete Walsh has been monitoring the animals on wildlife cameras, stating they are not the only wildlife being affected by the record dry-spell in the state.

💧Kunanyi's streams flow again after Hobart's record drought!

But this joy is bittersweet. Platypus, usually found in these waters, have not returned.

It's a poignant reminder of how fragile our ecosystems are. Their fate is our own; water is life for all. 🙏 pic.twitter.com/pr6ClvKI8R

— Hobart Rivulet Platypus (@HobartPlatypus) May 11, 2024

“What we’ve seen is a dramatic increase in the amount of conflict between animals, particularly lower down the river and around burrows, and feeding ponds,” Mr Walsh said.

“We’ve seen the abandoned nesting burrows during the summer.

“Platypus are a very slow breeding animal and when things aren’t sustainable for whatever reason, they will abandon their borough.”

Mr Walsh said that wildlife cameras of the Hobart Rivulet have shown not just platypus converging on what pools of water are left in the dried up stream, but other wildlife meeting in “amazing” circumstances.

Pete Walsh he has crowdfunded some money to set up a large platypus mural on a wall in South Hobart. He's an environmentalist who loves platypus.

“The convergence of animals around the water that was remaining before this last rainfall, there aren’t many secluded safe ponds in the lower part of the rivulet but the few that are … it was just amazing,” he said.

“There was platypus, wallabies, pademelons, water rats, ducks, it was just a procession of animals.”

The impacts on the platypus from just one period of low rainfall serves as a warning to Mr Walsh, who says this is a call to action for Hobartians to improve the management of the rivulet.

“Any significant weather event, particularly heat and fire related, really puts them at risk, especially if the waterway that they rely on is in poor health,” he said.

“There’s really a need for improved health in the waterway and improved management of the rivulet because it really is critical to the survival of not just platypus, but all of the animals that rely on that waterway.”