Hello again.Quote:
Originally Posted by Saitch
A few years ago I was on an advisory body for a cattle property near Springsure that had set aside 300ha as a reserve to protect the bridled nailtail wallaby - one of the rarest animals on the planet at the time. These small macropods had once been all over the continent but thought to have finally become extinct some decades ago. A relict population was discovered on a property near Emerald and the reserve was trying to build up a population from some animals taken off that property which had been resumed as a National Park.
Anyway, to the point. Whenever an animal was trapped it was tagged or recorded, weighed, checked for pregnancy if female, and then given a thorough de-ticking. It wasn’t uncommon to pull more than thirty ticks off a wallaby - especially around the base of the ears. The animal itself isn’t much bigger than a large cat.
The biggest problem for survival was feral cats - so, the Sporting Shooters Association would send up members several times a year to shoot them out. Did a reasonable job of it.
The other major problem was the National Park Service itself which was doing its best to recreate the extinction process for the animal in the National Park by killing out the dingoes, banning use of fire and resisting common sense to allow some limited grazing to keep the grass down to what the animals preferred. The green folks who control (the Minister who controls) the parks simply couldn’t make the sensible choice between staying “pure” and accommodating the survival needs of something rarer than snow leopards. As the populations in the park declined the pressure was on to take animals back off the reserve which was fought tooth and nail.
Cheers
