GREATER STICK-NEST RATS

The greater stick-nest rat

The greater stick-nest rat, or wopilkara, seems to me more like a guinea pig than a rat. It is gentle and playful and lives in a nest of grass which it surrounds with sticks. The nests may belong to several families and can grow as wide as 1.5 metres and a metre high. The rats were found across most of central Australia but their nests were often down trodden by introduced cattle and the animals became easy prey to foxes and feral cats. By the 1930s they were extinct on the mainland. Only a small pocket  survived on the Franklin Islands. Since then new populations have been established on other islands off the coasts of West and South Australia, and they are now being reintroduced to protected sanctuaries on the mainland. There used to be a lesser stick-nest rat but it has already become extinct, the last specimen being captured in 1933.

A colony of Greater Sick-nest Rats have already been translocated to Mount Gibson where a smaller feral-free enclosure has already been built to cater for them. Once the larger enclosure is completed the stick-nest rats will be transferred to there. I was able to see some of these animals and their nests the other night and they are fascinating animals. Some of the nests are monitored by camera traps. When reviewing a selection of these photographs we were dismayed to see one of the rats taken by an owl. To help the rats, and take the pressure off the growing population, we collected logs and sticks and built 'walk-ways' between nests and watering/feeding spots.

One of the rats posing for volunteers

A rat's nest

The greater stick-nest rat enclosure

Collecting logs for walk-ways

one of the rat walk-ways

THE SANCTUARY

So why am I at Mount Gibson? Well, Mount Gibson is an Australian Wildlife Conservancy(AWC) sanctuary. It covers 132,500 hectares in the south-west of Western Australia, about 3 to 4 hours north-east of Perth. AWC is currently building a feral-free fence over 40 kilometres long and enclosing some 8,000 hectares. This will be the largest enclosed feral-free area in Western Australia. Once this fence is completed and any feral predators, such as cats and foxes, are removed from this area then AWC will reintroduce nine of Australia’s most endangered mammals.

At present we are doing surveys to see which animals are present, and in what numbers, on the Mount Gibson sanctuary. Annual surveys will be able to look at the impact the removal of feral predators and the reintroduction of these new mammals are having on the wildlife populations which are there now.

Accommodation while at the sanctuary

The salt lakes

The volunteers and staff making dinner

A view from one of the hills

ZOO

Young numbat

Reaching Perth the first place I visited was Perth zoo. In particular I wanted to see the numbat breeding program. Perth is the only place breeding numbats and they released them into the wild at Yookamurra and at Scottia. When I was at Scottia the second time it was to see a group of these numbats. My job was to monitor the numbats that had been released. A number of them had radio-tracking collars and I would drive around each day locating these individuals.

At the zoo I talked to the numbat keeper, Dani, and she showed me where the numbats were bred. At present they had a batch of young numbats just being weaned from their mothers in preparation for their release, this time at Yookamurra. It was good to see how the program operated and to hear about the anti-predator training that they gave the young numbats. I was able to get some good photographs of the young numbats and of the female numbat on public display.

I also visited the African Painted Dogs which I have a soft spot for after working with them in South Africa. The Perth zoo was well laid out and there were a good number of people there. I had hoped also to see the squirrels which live in the trees around the zoo. These are the only squirrel colony in Australia and probably came from individuals that have escaped from the zoo. However very few of these have been seen in recent years and their population may have died out or at least is very reduced in numbers.

Dani, one of the keepers