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Marsupial Rescue

By Carole Herdegen

Australia has possibly the worst record for mammal extinctions. In the past two hundred years, eighteen species have completely disappeared and another twenty-six species are fighting for survival with miniscule populations. The main reason for this disaster has been the introduction of non- indigenous predators.

My first Earthwatch project was an attempt to turn back the hands of time to that period before the introduction of cats, foxes and rabbits to the mainland of Australia. I was one of six volunteers to work with Jeff Short, the principal research scientist, and Jacqui Richards, experimental scientist, in a remote community in Australia's Outback.

Our project was to assist in the re-establishment of three threatened mammal species that were discovered on two uninhabited islands off of South and Western Australia. This was to be a ten-year project and I had come aboard at about the half-way point.

The first of these species to be repopulated was a small marsupial called the burrowing bettong. The second was the western barred bandicoot, also a marsupial that already was recorded as being extinct. Last but not least was a small mammal called the greater stick-nest rat, not a marsupial but a member of the rodent family.

We traveled more than five hundred miles north of Perth in Western Australia to a place called Useless Loop. It's nearest neighboring town is 150 miles away. I thought it was a little strange when we turned off the main Perth road and saw a sign that read, "Useless Loop is a closed town. No access other than by appointment", signed by Site Manager of Shark Bay Salt.

Useless Loop is a company town occupied by the Shark Bay Salt Joint Venture, a salt mining company. No motels and no coffee shops. All of the town's 124 residents, apart from a small staff that teaches the thirty children at the primary school, are company employees.

The town was built on scrubby sand dunes with clumps of salt bush on a narrow peninsula. Its position on this peninsula made it an ideal place to release the repopulated captive colonies of our marsupials because there was a mile and a half of electrified fence that ran into the sea.

The town also boasts of being the location of one of Australia's most successful conservation projects comprising a partnership between the community of 124 residents of Useless Loop, the Shark Bay Salt Joint Venture and the CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific Industrial Research Organization) with the Earthwatch volunteers.

Our housing was a field-station that had a dormitory-style sleeping room and some outside cabins. For our meals, we ate in the Shark Bay Salt Company's canteen.

The animals we were protecting were tiny marsupials, no more than 18 inches tall.

The fence was not 100% effective, so one of our tasks was to bait and trap the ever hungry and approaching foxes and feral cats while our main assignment was the weighing, measuring and the implanting of computer chips in animals of our study groups.

The burrowing bettong is about the size of a rabbit and has a long tail, round ears and long hind feet that provide it with the ability to hop about just like the larger kangaroos. The western barred bandicoot is striped and has a long snout with a pink nose. The cute greater stick-nest rats are very small, docile rodents with round ears.

We placed transmitters on them in order to track them once they were released in a smaller fenced off area. After they became accustomed to their new surroundings, they would be released into the general animal population of the larger enclosure.

Each day, our names were posted on the work schedule.

Here is an example of our daily routines.

Mornings	Trap checking bandicoots, bettongs and greater stick-nest rats as well as setting traps for cats and foxes.
Afternoons	Radio tracking of the greater stick-nest rats. Trap baiting of bandicoots and bettongs as well as baiting of the cat traps.
Evenings	Spotlighting the areas to determine the numbers of "visiting" rabbits, cats and foxes.

In addition, we had to occasionally set pit traps and, of course, mend the fences.

We all shared in the various assignments and divided our duties into rotating day and night shifts.

It was a successful two-week project for myself and my fellow Earthwatch volunteers because there are now 300 free-range bettongs, 100 free-range bandicoots and a captive greater stick-nest rat population of 20 animals, growing and soon to be released into the wild.

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