Endangered wallaby population bounces back after feral cats fenced out

[Still Waters]

A population of bridled nailtail wallabies in Queensland has been brought back from the brink of extinction after conservation scientists led by UNSW Sydney successfully trialled an intervention technique never before used on land-based mammals.

Using a method known as 'headstarting', the researchers rounded up bridled nailtail wallabies under a certain size and placed them within a protected area where they could live until adulthood without the threat of their main predators—feral cats—before being released back into the wild.

In an article published today in Current Biology, the scientists describe how they decided on the strategy to protect only the juvenile wallabies from feral cats in Avocet Nature Refuge, south of Emerald in central Queensland, where they numbered just 16 in 2015.

Article lead author Alexandra Ross says juvenile wallabies under 3kg—or smaller than a rugby football—are easy prey for feral cats.

https://phys.org/news/2021-05-endangered-wallaby-population-ferals.html

[Timothy]

Bit of a pun there eh? @Still Waters