Dozens of brush-tailed bettongs have been flown from Western Australia and released into South Australia in a bid to boost population numbers.
Key points:
- Thirty-six bettongs have been trans-located from Western Australia to Dhilba Guuranda-Innes National Park
- Each bettong is monitored with a tracking device and protected in a fenced off sanctuary
- One bettong can dig two to six tonnes of dirt a year which improves water infiltration and helps disperse seeds in the soil
The Northern and Yorke Landscape Board, the Department for Environment and Water, Narungga Nation Aboriginal Corporation and WWF-Australia have teamed up to relocate 36 bettongs to Dhilba Guuranda-Innes National Park on the Yorke Peninsula.
Last August, 40 bettongs were released into Innes National Park and before that, they were extinct in the region for more than a century due to being predated by foxes and feral cats.
Narungga Nation business manager Gary Goldsmith said he travelled to WA with the landscape board to get permission from Noongar custodians to capture and relocate the bettongs.
“To be there and then release them was absolutely fantastic and it was endearing to share that moment with both Narungga and Noonga representatives,” Mr Goldsmith said.
“These individual creatures do a marvellous job for the ecology, and I hope they will improve the landscape and their genetic diversity.
“I guess it’s a really good blueprint for how we might translocate other indigenous fauna to Dhilba Guuranda in the future,” he said.
Population boost
The bettongs were fitted with tracking devices before being released into the 170,000-hectare sanctuary.
They are kept safe by a predator control fence that runs 25 kilometres across the Yorke Peninsula.
Northern and Yorke Landscape Board Ecologist, Derek Sandow says the results are really promising so far.
“We expect that there is potential for several thousand bettongs to survive in the areas that they’ve been released,” Mr Sandow said.
“The original 40 have showed signs of breeding and we’ve seen bettongs out there that have naturally been born on the Yorke Peninsula.
“By introducing those WA genetics, that’s going to improve the genetic structure of the population going forward,” he said.
Healthy environment
The bettongs also play an important role as soil engineers where they dig in the ground and turn over lots of soil.
“Each small bettong can turnover up to two to six tonnes of soil per year,” Mr Sandow said.
“That aerates the soil, provides microhabitats for seeds and water to infiltrate the soil and that helps plants establish and grow,” he said.
If the project continues to be successful then other locally extinct species like the southern brown bandicoot, red-tailed phascogale, and western quoll could also be reintroduced into Dhilba Guuranda-Innes National Park.
Posted , updated