Back from the ashes: Recovering Gilbert’s Potoroo at Two Peoples Bay

 

Dr Tony Friend

Thanks very much for the intro. Just a mention about myself. I'm a retired research scientist from DBCA, the department with many names. I actually joined the department in 1980. It was the Department of Fisheries and Wildlife in those days, and it became CALM. DEC, Parks and Wildlife and now the BBCA.

And you say you get your sausages from DBC, not from DBCA.

Anyway, I’m not talking about sausages today sausages today. I'm going to be talking about Gilberts Potoroo. I guess I was appointed or recruited or given a job. After I finished my PhD in Tasmania and, flew over here and the boss said, why don't you come now just before Christmas? Everyone's going away. It made me finish my writing up.

So, that was all about numbats. And that wasn't until 1999 when I was asked to come down to Albany. Well, not asked to come down on. That was my choice. I think I was supposed to do it from Perth to look after or to continue the project on this very endangered animal, which had only just been discovered a few years earlier.

And, it's been quite a journey. Some of you might know the story aspects of it, and I suppose this slide illustrates one of the most dramatic times in that 20 plus years or whatever it's been that I’ve been working on the Potoroo. I retired in 2020, and, it didn't go away. And they gave me a casual contract to keep on working on Gilbert's Potoroo.

So that sort of seems to suit everybody. For the moment. So, I've got a bit of background and I'm not sure to give you, on the Potoroos and I'm not sure how many people have heard me talk before because some of the slides might look familiar, but it's it's good for people, I think, to have, a reasonable, fresh appreciation of the background before this happened.

Can everyone hear me? Thank you for that microphone work. Well, it's, But it's. Yeah. Technologically challenged.

Right. Yes. This animal is known. Oh. That's loud.

How did this animal have known as Ngilkaat by the Noongar people, by the Menang people who knew it well before science knew it. And, in fact, it was a good piece of Tucker. Very, very plentiful, characterful and lived with Quokkas in the dense scrub around Albany. And both were hunted for food. Small area of scrub was knocked down where the potoroos and quokkas lived.

And, the, the, women and children would come through shooing the animals out into the open and where they'd get speared by the men.

And apparently, they could then get lots of animals in this way. So the animal, it wasn't rare in those days. Scientifically, we know. And we know it as Potorous Gilberti or the Gilbert's Potoroo. It's about. It's in the family of the kangaroos. So it's got hopping hind legs and, young in a pouch, obviously a marsupial.

And they weigh, an adult weighs about a kilogram. The first record was by John Gilbert, and he got so his name on it. 1840 year near Albany. And, then the last specimen in the early period was collected in the 1870s, somewhere around Albany. And, and then by 1900, it was thought to be extinct, not the, you know, I guess it lives in places where people wouldn't see it.

And, nobody had seen one. But in 1994, a PhD student working on Quokka s, tracked one and then a couple more and, then it was worked out, but this was a long, long lost Gilbert's Potoroo. And that was in Two People's Bay nature reserve. At that stage, that was that was the only population.

And there were only about 40 maximum 40 animals left. This makes it very, very endangered. So for these these reasons, it's it's called it's kn\own as critically endangered and it inhabits this long unburnt scrub although there’s a story to that. We though it was long unburnt that it wanted and and eats almost all it eats is these underground fruiting fungi, fruiting bodies of fungi, truffles, if you like.

So in this dense bush, it's extremely vulnerable to wildfire. And, for all those reasons, it was it's got at the highest level of endangerment in all the conservation lists. Only found in Two People's Bay. And it's, in fact, that does that, too. Oh, look, it's only in this section of the reserve where the if if, you know Two Peoples Bay this this is sand dune and limestone and then you get the granite at the end of the peninsula.

And that's where the Potor oos are.

So, obviously the, the threats, there's quite a few threats to this little, tiny little population. Unsuitable fire regimes, because, fire will take the habitat away. Introduced predators since settlement since European settlement, Fox and the feral cat have arrived and they both eat potoroos happily. Habitat fragmentation as clearing progressed along the south coast.

And they were probably never very far, distributed beyond what probably went east about as far as Green Range. And then. And then there are some, fossil, some fossil remains in caves at Margaret River. So that's about the extent of its range. However, the threat of being of a small population, all sorts of things happen in small populations that don't happen in large ones.

You know, you might like your neighbour. She might be the only female around. So there's a, can be an unsustainable colony structure. You can get by sex bias. Too many of one sex. And of course, predation effects have a huge effect. I mean, one predator gets a, learns how to confine these things, and eat them.

Could make have a big impact on the population. And then, of course, climate change hanging on the bottom of the south coast. Where does the, where does its envelope go as the climate dries up? Out to sea. So that's, probably the long-term sad picture for Gilbert's Potoroo.

So the recovery, action started pretty soon after the rediscovery in 1994. The obvious thing was to look after the population that's there. And so this required, fire management, which is already happening because of the Noisy scrub bird that had been discovered, there at Two People’s Bay in 1961. Predator control was already in place, and it took Fox control was.

And then we were still learning how to control feral cats. Obviously, it's a popular place to visit, so visitor management is important. And then the new thing was, we've got to keep an eye on the population to see if, if if it's healthy, if it's steady, if it's declining. And that involved that stage a lot of trapping, cage trapping.

We've discovered that the bait that they like is, peanut butter, oats and pistachio essence.

And that's a real problem because the pistachio essence we used to be able to get is not available anymore. And I read a, an online article about pistachio essence and, and somebody had done a taste and cooking test with seven different brands and none of them were anything like any of the others. And so, we've got one now that just I can hardly smell it, whereas the other one used to be so beautiful and fragrant and sweet.

Yeah. Yeah. Oh, if I was a potoroo I would have gone for it. So actually, now I started to use hazelnut essence because that it's. Yeah, it's got a strong smell. So anyway, we're still catching them. So obviously with just one population. It was pretty important to, to spread the animals around so that more egg, more eggs in more baskets, if you like.

And so, at that time, there was just the one population. Something disastrous happened. Goodbye. So that was the sort of number one, after looking after the existing population, that was the number one strategy. And this was all laid out in a, you know, recovery plan, as we you know, we do. So to start up new populations or we've got to get some animals from somewhere.

So, the obvious thing was let's breed them in captivity and then we'll let them go. Sounds good, except it didn't really work very well. Over a new just about six, six, first six years, I think, in captivity in the captive colony. They were eight young ones was born. So it wasn't a total failure, but it just it wasn't sustainable.

And most of the females stopped breeding. There was also some, a kidney disease, which is, seemed to be genetic. So that wasn't great. Artificial insemination was tried, at the zoo, but the animals died because they were being over handled as with what you had to do. So, then we thought extensive captive breeding. We'll set up an enclosure in the bush and get the animals.

You know, if they can live off the bush, then maybe it'll be better for their breeding. If there was something missing from the artificial diet. So that was something else that was tried. And then the third possibility would be to actually take animals in the wild translocate them. But the danger there is, it's only a few animals, and you can't take many.

So we tried some other things, sourcing them from the wild by devious means. And one of those was cross fostering young. That's swapping pouch young from Gilberts Potoroos into long nosed potoroos, which are common and breed like rabbits in captivity that very easy to look after. So that was the plan. Hand rearing of wild pouch young was another one.

So you take pouch young when it's just about to leave the mother and rear it, you know, as in the, animal carer feeding them all night etc.. And then, then the female will go back and have another young more quickly. That's the idea of these strategies. And then of course, the final thing them of which we ended up resorting to, which was taking them from the wild.

And so there's a number of different ways you can do that which has less impact on the population. So slow removal being the key. So, the cross fostering didn't work very well. I think we got two through out of six attempts. The others just disappeared. Hand rearing for our poor carer was was pulling her hair out because these little animals were not behaving and one of them wouldn't eat.

And yeah, it was tough. Very tough. So that's wild-to-wild translocation was what we did. So where can we put them? The choices that came up quite early on was Bolt Island, off Cheynnes Beach. Noisy scrub birds had been put there, with great success. And they're they're still doing very well over there. It was close by.

It's mostly the same sort of granite. Geologically. It's very similar to the Mount Gardner, peninsula. So, we started with a little trial. Oh, here we go. 800 hectares. No introduced mammals. Easy to get to, but not easy to get on. Yeah. It's granite. It's a nature reserve. There's no fire recorded. As in no big fires recorded.

Historically, obviously it's burned at some stage, but, the callitris tree rings indicated that, Locky Macaw had a look at that. There was a fire. Well, this is an old slide a long time ago. And people don't go there very much because there are no beaches to land on. You've got to basically jump off your boat onto the rocks, and then someone's got to stay with the boat, so there are easier places to go fishing.

And so that was done. And then the site number two, was I think there was a little bit of very similar habitat over, near Normas Beach just behind Norman's Beach in the part of the Waychinnicup National Park. And we were able to get funds to build an enclosure that was only 380 hectares, which is about a third of the size of the Mount Gardner Peninsula.

And so that was the plan, 8.2km floppy top fence. So, the cats and foxes couldn't get in. And we were able to because there was this bit of habitat was only a part of it was only about 50 hectares of it that looked like Gilberts Potoroo habitat. We could see whether the animals used other vege types, vegetation types.

There's a possibility the enclosure could be used for other threatened species. There were already noisy scrub in there and western ringtail possums. So there are other possibilities and nobody's put any western ground parrots in there yet. But we did try to dibblers and they didn't go very well.

So when before putting the starting move, the, animals on mass, we would had trials with 2 to 4, animals that potoroos males and females, that we would release at first and monitor very closely with transmitters and all the rest, pick up their poo and look at their diet. And then then there are success criteria set up when you propose a translocation that you have to meet, to progress, to be allowed to progress.

So there's got to be approvals all the way along the line. Of course. It's funny because success criteria don't actually mean you're going to have a population, meaning that for the po p, you can end up with a population and fail all the success criteria. But, you know, there's got to be some procedure. I guess. Anyway. Anyway, this shows two animals on Bald Island and, have a weight change.

Basically, they stayed the same or dropped and came up again. Condition similar. So by five weeks we took them off the island and they were they got the tick of approval, given the tick of approval. So we were allowed to go ahead with it and then moved ten individuals. But in 2005 to 2007, from Two People’s Bay, just dribs and drabs over the three years.

And mean time we monitored Two People’s Bay. And actually during that time the population increased. So, we weren't having an impact on it.

And on Bald Island, the results were spectacular. I think we ended up with, yes, with 45 animals after about three years. And then and then it got up to what seems to be the carrying capacity. You this is only the numbers known to be alive. That's the number we catch in our traps. And they were quite a lot of traps, but we don't track everything.

So, you know, you could probably add on a 25% to that. So that's a lot more animals. And we started with the Waychinnicup enclosure, got going a couple of years later. And again, we did a trial and that was successful. And the difference between the enclosure and Bald Island was that the enclosure has carpet pythons and they're very good at a big female carpet python, quite happily.

Happily, eat a potoroo, and easily so. In fact, I think the fence, which also allowed the from excluding the foxes and cats, allowed the Quokkas and that bush rats and the bandicoots to all increase. And so there's probably this, this humming with mammal life, and carpet python can quite happily climb fences or go through them. So, they didn't take off quite the way Bald Island did, which has no predators of Potoroos.

So we kept putting them in and ended up with, After a while, we ended up with a fairly steady population that's probably up to about 30 now. So towards the end. Yeah. Up here that was that 2018. Yep. Right. So, the upshot of all of that was we had two insurance populations as well as the Two Peoples Bay one.

And it had taken a while to get there. So, this is you know, talking 15 years after 20 years after the discovery of the species. So, there we've ended up at from between 2005 in 2013. We've gone from 20 to 111-ish. So that's that's a lot better situation. Three populations.

And that was probably just as well that we got that far before the big fire happened. And that it had been feared forever since at the beginning of the, discovery, the Potoroo was recognized as the biggest danger. And, eventually it happened. There were two very dry winters. 2013, 2014 and 2015.

And so places that were wet on that peninsula all year round dried out. The the creeks that used to run all year round stopped running. And, then there was this huge lightning storm came and went all the way along the south coast and Two People’s Bay got hit 2015 and it was quite dramatic.

I didn't want to go there after that, but that's, you know, the all the bush, the, the lush, dense bush that had been there that they all the animals were hiding in. It was just gone. It was just the black sticks sticking up. And, we we searched around and found a couple of places that had been left from the fire.

And I guess the map shows you roughly most of what was burnt, but, there were little patches. And then this chunk here was that was able to be defended. I mean, there was a tremendous effort to stop that fire, and it I almost stopped it here. Would have been just this much that was burnt, but then it popped over and away it went so,

Yeah. Despite all good, you know, very valiant efforts. It burned, so we chased around and we actually, luckily, I suppose fortunately, in some ways, we just put, transmitters on to seven Potoroos in there. And so they were running around beeping, we're able to find five of them. And then after that, a couple of others turned up.

So we ended up with eight. After the fire. And so we were able to. Oh okay. So so then we tried to put some which thought there wasn't enough room for those eight animals on, on that little patch that, that was, unburnt. So let's move some of them to Michaelmas Island. Bad idea. Just not big enough. 00:21:35:20 - 00:22:00:15 Dr Tony Friend Not enough food. What what got us really was the fact that the island, it's quite, you know, it's sort of longish. At one end, there's a granite dome and the rest is a ridge which is covered with limestone. And the Potoroos did not step outside the granite, so they're only using about a third of what was there, and it just wasn't enough food.

So that was a failure. And then we continued to monitor the animals at Two People’s Bay and I think it was just this small population effect, I mean, that there was a female who that we caught all the time and she never had young after that, you know, early on. So yeah, by 2022, we couldn't find any Potoroos there, with our trapping and with cameras.

However, during that time, we were able to put GPS units, onto the tails of tiny little, devices that take fixes, however, and how often you program them to do. And as you can see, as as time went on from 2016 when that Potoroo was entirely within this, this is the unburnt section of I showed you before.

This is all burned. Next year they're starting to stick their noses out and then, you know, a bit further by 2019, they're actually nesting in the, in the burnt habitat. And 2020, and then we couldn't find any more Potoroos. And that's when we thought, yeah, it's just about time to start putting them back. So that there was another proposal that needed to be approved.

And, that was also structured so that we'd have a trial with a few animals, and then see, basically see if they were using the burnt habitat or not. As this unburnt section was lovely as it was before, the bush was this high and dense and, seemed like just what they would like. So, we moved eight potoroos in from Bald Island and the enclosure.

And as you can see, is males and females. And then I'll just skip forward, there for the first releases, we met all these criteria. So success criteria, there was one. Now there were two out of the eight were predated. One was taken by a carpet python and the other by a cat. After that, the cat control was ramped up even more.

And then the weight loss that was fine. We had to collect enough data determined to determine where the burnt areas, were used. And we did that. And in actual fact, we found that they were using it very extensively. And also during that first six months, we had a recorded a new pouch young, you know, in one of the potoroos so that was going well so far.

Just to emphasize the burnt use of, burnt habitat, these these are the, transmitters, the transmitters are taped around the tail of the potoroo, and they only stay on for about two months, and then they fall off when it becomes less sticky. So, where the potoroos dropped their transmitters, it gives an indication of where they set up their home ranges and that, the first year they were all out in the burnt area, six.

Yeah, six. There were a couple of them are dead, but, you know, and they'd been eaten, but they were out in the, in the burnt. Second year, it was less clear. Three of them stayed in the burnt area and two went outside. But overall, eight of eleven moved into burnt what was previously burnt. Now this is by this stage it's eight years old.

Eight years since since fire. So, from the trial, we learned that the survival, was good, except for the ones that got eaten. But in terms of habitat quality, it's was all underlined. That was good. And the weight change. And then they actually choosing to live in the burnt area. So, then we got the tick to continue on with the full translocation.

Around this time, we recruited a whole lot of the volunteers, 24 volunteers. I don't know if anyone's here. Val?

Yeah. So. Yes. And the thing was, we divided the the night, so three, six-hour shifts, and you go out on your shift with your three team members, three other team members, 4 to 4 in the team. Sit at your tower for the night and take bearings on each Potoroo every 20 minutes. And it sounds terrible. Actually, I think some people enjoyed it.

We used to take these photos at the end of the week and someone said, everybody looks so tired. So I thought I'd better take a photo at the beginning. So these are our two teams. And, you this this is the radio tracking super-duper tent that was, provided by Gilberts Potoroo action group via one of their members actually made them for nothing, made it for a free.

We tracked the Potoroos the previous two weeks and got four, unfortunately, all four males, but we caught four, which is enough to work with, and there given transmitters and G.P.S. units. Two of them from Bald Island. And another one was, yeah, they have two others were new ones that had turned up. They were too old to have come in, too old to have been born since the translocated animals come in too young to have survived the fire.

So, there was obviously a underground population of, of Potoroos lurking there. So, we put the towers up and then way there went. Two weeks’ worth of radio tracking and,

The most important thing is to have good food. So the accommodation wasn't that great. Some people got to sleep inside other people in tents. But, you know, I think generally people had a good time. And best of all, they put their own data in the computer, which is good because then you can interpret your own writing, not leave it to someone else.

So, this was the outcome of that. This is again, this is the burnt side and that's the unburnt side. So, you can see there are.

Not even crossing the road at all. These these are our tower sites where someone sits all night. There's the I have given them all names for various reasons. North Pink Palace, Heath and where's the other one? Two, three.

Okay, I think that's it. Oh, no. No, that’s this little guy. I’ll have to look closer. Anyway, there were four.

So, three teams of three shifts. Four people. Yeah. So, I so just just skimming down to 2025, we, we actually ran out of money in 2024. And most of our funding comes from, the Federal government through South Coast NRM, who are also, I guess, sponsoring this do today. And they had a, it was between projects and they had this co-design period and it went on and on.

And so there was no funding for that year you know, not South Coast NRMs fault. But it's just that's the way the system works. So, I had to get permission to extend the translocation period for another year. And we bought in six potoroos from the two sites, but emphasis on females because the males seem to be dominating the place.

And then yes, kept control fox and cat control continued. And 2025, this just gives you an idea of where they go while they're still wearing a little GPS, which only you know it can be. I think I've got some dates up there, so that one's only seven days before it fell off, but it went a long way.

Released to them, putting them in. I think those ones, they they went into the Burnt side. I thought, I've learned my lesson. But still, this one moved right down here. They ended up in this place here.

Another one here again went all over the place, but they ended up, here. And Richard actually caught her last week and a bit of trapping. Where did this one ended up? 607 is 607 still round here. She's there, but didn't catch her last week, but she has been just turned up with a baby in pouch, and the male this male.

So this. Yeah, this, that last one. Just twice. So that. Yeah, that's the only one from Bald Island. I've got results for here, but ended up down the bottom. And this little male ended up down there too. So they were obviously hooked up somehow. He was a young guy. He was a young male and female was a bit older.

So, you know, maybe taught him a thing or two.

So that anyway so that was, that was interesting. And we're still, we're still chasing these animals around. It is challenging after the transmitters drop off, we've got a really got to find them to continue to get any more information. Trapping is good because you get a really good idea of how the animal is. It's condition, it's weight , it's breeding.

But it is it's very time consuming. And, you know, it's physical out there.

But, it's the more it's the sort of bottom line, I suppose, is the gold standard, really to monitor animals and, of course, during the fire, we, we've left traps out in the bush because it's too much hard work to keep dragging them in and out. We were trapping three times a year. So they they live out in the bush.

And of course, most of them got burnt in the fire. And anyway Gilberts Potoroo action group has just purchased 100 new ones that really shiny compared with the burnt ones, And hope the Potoroos like them. So that's the next big job. But, that that will, I think that'll improve that work better than the rusty ones.

Once, once the fire takes the galvanize off track wire. Well, I mean, you know, they're like, just rust and are a bit crappy anyway, so that's trapping is good. But, so we we have lots of sensor cameras all over the place and, I don't know if you can see what's going on over there, but there's an adult potoroo and a small potoroo.

So sometimes you can get lucky and, you know, because they all look very similar. Sometimes there are distinguishing marks. We actually take ear tissue for DNA when we catch them, and you can see whether it's got a little notch in its ear or not. Sometimes they've got transmitters. Yes. Sometimes they've been in a fight and you've lost a bit of fur, so you get an idea of how many there are.

It's actually quite powerful. I’m surprised once you start really looking hard at the images? That, cylinder there is, is a bait container that brings them into the camera. Same old, pistachio essence.

So it's something I've had these gadgets for quite a while and haven't really used them much, and I thought I better dig them out of the store and these are field microchip scanners. So when we catch a potoroo, we put a microchip in it, and that stays in it for life. And this there's a you can see this sort of black square.

That's that's a microchip antenna and that's hooked up to a actual scanner that's in that box. So when a Potoroo goes, oh, so and this, this thing here, this is also from the past, what we used to use hair arching. You have a bait in the back of this funnel that's open that end. You put double sided sticky tape inside.

Animal goes in and leaves its hair behind. And then you can microscopically identify the species from the hair. That's old technology. Now we just put cameras out, but, we've got a lady in town who used to work for me. Who, is highly skilled in what's called hair ID. There's a program that that does it and microscopy.

So that's available. But cameras are pretty good. Except when you get down to them, little micey things, you know, they're very hard to tell apart.

But still, it's been it's been impressive. The biggest problem is the, the battery life isn't very good. So we're gonna have to get some, solar. Solar help. So, anyway, what what are we. Where are we now? We know there's six that we've caught this year. Cameras. We've distinguished nine individuals. Just on a last few cameras in two sites.

The field scanner has given us five individuals just on the first run, and the batteries ran out in two days. So once we get that going, I think that'll be the most powerful technique. And, maybe we'll get more of them. But, this is the female that was was caught within pouch, earlier this year that I'm sorry.

There's a baby. That's a leg and that's the tail. And. Yeah, it looks like a girl.

So all in all, you know. Well, it's still hard work at Two People’s Bay. But we've got to recall, remember that we've got other these other populations. And, this is the sort of whoops, this is the overall, picture of numbers over the years. This is the same amount of trapping and all different sights. And you can see in the early days that we had Captive Colony and the Two People’s Bay and then put on Bald Island, Bald Island became the dominant section.

The enclosure here in blue that's, you know, sound. And we've also put them on Middle Island in the, Recherche Archipelago off Cape Arid, the other side of Esperance and they're going really well there. It's just very hard to monitor them. But I'm confident there's at least 20 there.

Yeah. So yeah. So, I suppose it's important to, to recognize that the Potoroo would be, would be extinct if it wasn't for those insurance populations. So that's really the most important thing. And that's why we got to this stage through investment by state, state and federal governments. And help from groups like Gilbert's Potoroo Action Group, we were allowed there.

Well, I was while I was still employed, there were three of us working solidly on Gilbert's Potoroo, and that that was probably the key to it all. There was that support given from the department. Of course, the strong local community support for Gilbert's Potoroo Action group has been fantastic, and they've provided a lot of money, hundreds of thousands of dollars towards the project over the years.

There's a recovery team which is, sort of oversees the whole program. It's, from people from different institutions, not just the DBCA. And, yeah, federal, I think I've talked about that. And of course, we, you know, recognize that the species isn't totally out of the woods. It's a long way from it. But I suspect that in the next revision of the Red list, the IUCN endangered species list, the potoroo will come off critically endangered.

Which doesn't seem right to me, but it's the criteria for that require decline. And we can't really say the species is declining even though the population is tiny. And so here's the major from contributors here. Department South Coast NRM Australian government with money comes from and Gilbert's Potoroo action group. Thank you. Any questions.

Close. Can you tell me what exactly is is that the camera that you detect? Sorry, I, I failed, except. Yeah. Now that's another device. Should have had a photo of that. It's a clever. It's a box about this big. And it has a camera. It also has light beams, which shoots out, and it can actually detect if they’re hitting something or not.

And it works out to the certain pattern of beams that's broken. It can tell foxes and cats from other species, and that's been. They both have long legs, so light goes underneath and that's basically it. If it detects if its logic circuit says yes, that's a fox. So yes, that's a cat. It spits out a little blob of jelly containing 1080, and the theory is the animal goes away and grooms itself.

They're called grooming traps. Actually, grooms itself and gets the 1080. Yeah, we we've been using them, but, you know, they it's not the be all and end all, they’re hard work. And, I think it depends on the situation where it is and where it's placed. So anyway, there, there, we've got three of them out of Two People's Bay, you know, basically.

And that's a lot of that, a lot of them in a small area. And if I ask about the microchips, how, how close they need to be to the animals to detect it’s there? Yeah. That's, that's a good question because they don't have any power themselves. They just, the scanner, sends a signal to it and it responds, code recodes and that'll tell you what the code is on that animal.

That scanning plate has a range of 25cm. Okay. The little scanners we use to, you know, we haven't had to scan an animal in the hand. Probably that distance. Yeah. So, I've been very trying to. Yeah, yeah. And, no, not not not that technology. I mean, I've heard of people tracking some animals with these things, but that I think it was a land snail in New Zealand.

And I get like that big and they've actually put a, put a transponder, which is the size of the snail. And then I could track it from a meter away. So yeah, it's not it's not good for that. We need to have something with power. Yeah. And that's I mean, yeah, the transmitters we use are pretty good, but, the reason we put them around the tail is because we tried collars in the early days and managed to kill a female because she just put her both feet through the collar.

Right. So that was it. No more collars.

Yeah. I was just curious about how effective the field to have been. And we have some trial looked at thermal imaging. Yeah, there is that is being used now is more. I mean, we haven't done a Two People's Ba y yet. I think I guess, okay. Thermal imaging then you've got a effective enough to distinguish though.

We're not really. Yes it is now. Yeah. To, to distinguish it. Sorry. We're looking for potoroos or are we looking for predators? I'll say for. Yeah, yeah. I, it would probably be difficult because you've got Quendas, Potoroos and Quokkas. You could tell the quokka big quokka. But then there's young ones, those who are small ones, I don't know, it's getting pretty good.

Other. But I guess I think the promise has been, Yeah. You have to get close enough, though. Still, you know, I think you'd have to be within, I don't know, 20m in that, in that bush. But I'm talking through my hat, I've never used one, so I'm just guessing. Yeah. And the effect of,

Felix, Felix's. Are you getting any ferals one there? Yeah. Not that many. No, I think I mean, also the main strategies is the, fox baiting. Cat baiting to eradicate. They both tended, and trapping. So they're using, leg hold traps to trap cats. And that's again that's got its problems because other animals. But the bait is used is cat poo and wee.

But strangely enough, everything goes and has a sniff of it. Yeah. So, the traps are currently, you know, raised above ground. Yeah. Which rules out most, most of the mammals that are likely to get caught. … are bad. The can get anywhere where a cat can get so we don't have them out of Two People's Bay luckily.

But they they're not catching very many, you know, and because even if you don't catch a Cat, you can usually see it's been there. So the trappers have a pretty good idea, you know, if there are cats around and they're not seeing many now.

Could they take this? Obviously you you've got to actually be out there when it takes you to see it. Is there any promising technology to where you can attach like look at G.P.S. data logger that sees. Records where they have been. Yeah. That's what that's what those maps are based on.

They're not not tracking one, but the, These one, that's all G.P.S.. Okay. So that's a that's a so that was, for instance, the 24th first ten days was, but yeah, they don't always get a fixed program and say every two hours and you might miss 2 or 3 and, you know, but it's pretty good though.

And I've been, I've used them on animals where you can put a collar on them and they're fantastic. But I mean, would you like to talk about potential for, more relocation sites? Yes. Well, is that I suppose the important thing is we've been having workshops on this, and, you know, you gotta have a workshop.

There's a process called structured decision making. SDM which is, you know, I guess it's it works on getting a lot of people in the room and, working through, talking about things, ending up. So sort of consensus stuff. And so that's been done. And we've come up with a list of places and, I think we've homing in on about three of them along the South Coast.

We don't have a lot of islands and more islands to play with, that are big enough. So it's going to be a mainland site. One issue is, is it in the former range or not? There are also, cultural issues with, traditional owners, you know, with, with the they want this sort of I don't want that move there and that that's all taken into account as well.

So that's happening. What we don't have is the funding to do it. So, I mean, what what we're on at the moment is pretty basic, just keeping track of what's out there anyway. I just wondering how many young females carry a pouch? Okay Young family. One. So they can, but they haven't back to back so they can have a little jellybean in the pouch and another one putting its head in.

That's that's come out. And they're pretty quick. It's, it's about four months lactation from birth to independence. And so the females can get through about two and a half. If so, back-to-back two and a half a year. And then potoroos, the males and females can live to ten years. I mean, obviously most don't.

And this is what you say when the longevity of wild animals, it's only a few that get to that most, most of them die as juveniles you know that's that's a, that's life. But so a female can easily, you know, replace herself. I, you know, we've had it we had one female that we knew had 25 young in her in her life.

And, yeah, it's just not bad. She died with one. She was skinny. The pouch young was doing well. And then the python ate her.

Sorry. I didn't want to do that. Do they have embryonic …. Yes. It's made her. Yeah, yeah. So that's handy.

And another question. Can you downsize those transmitters so that you can actually, implant them under the skin? The problem with that is, aerial. So these, these transmitters that have on the tail have a transmitter that long. So, what they usually do with implanted transmitters have quite a powerful transmitter and the aerial is sort of wound around, but it's not efficient at all.

So theoretically, but it's not done very much for small animals. Yeah. Sorry. Yeah. I just wanted to ask about the, the females, too. I think earlier when you were discussing the fact that you were surprised at some of the, maybe translocated animals can actually breed. They were not breed. And I wondered if it worked out what was causing that.

It was translocation, not that it wasn't so much the translocated animals. I can't remember what the discussion was. But I think was saying it was surprised that we hadn't seen that they were able to birth, able to breed. So, no, I know that was going back. Way back, I think when we put them into the enclosure, they were captive animals and they stopped breeding in captivity.

But we don't know that. That's the question is. Yeah. Is it diet? Is it just general conditions of captivity? But the fact that we couldn't reverse it by putting them in the bush. But I think it means obviously something like something gets switched off. I still think it's probably diet. I mean, you've got it. That's an extreme diet.

Nothing but fungi. They do have a few little things. They’ll eat fruits and, you know, the fruit side of tiny, of course. And, they do eat some animal, you know, in some insects. But that's not really after fungi. So, I mean, fungi are very variable that the the, the truffles themselves aren't actually one kind of fungus.

They all the different families of fungi have truffles. And you'll have a genus of, of generally not genus. But anyway, group of fungi that will have mushrooms semi mushrooms and truffles all in the same, you know, phylogenetic group. So and so as well as that they, we did a study on say water content. There's some truffles that have 14% and it's all water.

Now others its 90% water. So, very diverse, and presumably bringing a lot of different nutrients to the potoroo who studied on the potoroo on an honours program back in 2000. He found 44 different kinds of fungi in the potoroo poo. So they really variety and they were all truffles.

So there's a lot out there and they can access them all. Certainly. What’s being done on determining what effect the fire had on truffle production. No, not directly here. Well, this has been some work done, but it's not finished.

That, generally speaking, I think that the, truffles don't really have much of you know, they don't have. It's not much of a blip when it has a fire, for a start they are underground. I mean, it's really to do with the plants. The plants that they depend on. Of course they do. They, they're, mycorrhizal.

So they do have a partnership with the plant roots. And so that obviously the plant gets but it's going to affect them. But, it's, it's amazing how quickly everything gets up again. I mean, when Two Peoples Bay burnt and it was all black within a week, I reckon, and it was all sedges kept, just kept growing.

You know, that thing burned off at the top and then it's green. It's like, looked like sort of a parkland with dead trees. And so, it does come back. And we were very lucky because there was a lot of rain following, you know, that, that, the fire even, you know, even over summer.

You know. Oh, yeah. I joined as a member of the action group. I'm not sure that you got any info on the action group and how to join. It's just $22 a year, and I think if there's more members it might attract more funding from the government. Yeah, well, wait a minute. There's some cards at the back there that that give information on the group.

And it's the very active online. And I think that's really been a great success in, in recent years.

I guess there's, you know, it'd be nice if there were more local members. I think, because it's started out as very local and now it's become, you know, global, and, yeah, I must say I miss it. We used to have social events? You know, go places.

To do they breed according to the food that is available like kangaroos? I think I think this is a very stable environment. So, it and the and the fungi pretty, I mean, they would respond to lack of rain, I think. But they're having this wide variety of food. There are several species or several types of fungi that were found in every scatt of every animal in every time of year.

So there's some very prolific, there's a prolific resource there, and they might lose some of the rare ones. But, you know, I think the solid base of food. So I don't think that they need to do that. It may affect them, but I guess you wouldn't really know.

But they do breed. I think, a lot of people got the wrong message when we were having. We're struggling with them in get them breeding in captivity, but in the wild they were just pumping them out.

You think that's the limiting factor of carrying capacity of somewhere like Bald Island? I'm going to get up pretty quick when improvement. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Level up. Yeah. Well I think it's I mean there is, there is an effect of rainfall. And we do notice that they, you know, like decline or at least I think they do actually stop breeding so much when it stops raining.

But they're probably maintaining themselves and they don't find them in poor condition. Generally.

Do you think they were, more broadly distributed before European settlement. So would have been in the Stirlings and Porongorups. Yeah, I don't think so. I think that most of all is fairly coastal. There's no evidence of them. I mean, obviously evidence is what's in a cave and there aren't many caves. But yeah, it seems like they were.

Well, we're pretty coastal. I think there.

Yeah. There's no evidence that there was, that some fossil stuff is all near the coast. And then back to that coastal. Well, that's fairly well intact isn’t it all along the south coast. Yeah, but I guess there's been fire and, you know, there's been. Yeah. I guess it's not. Yeah. It's not, not clear to the coast.

But if you give you're talking about just the granite, the granites rather than the limestone. And this problem, when you go east, there's, there's less granite. There's sort of chunks here and there. So, I mean, we're looking at places like Mount Lindsey. That might be a possibility, but, I think there's the forresters tell us that there's a big lead time to be had before you, off.

So it should say the five people. We've got a plan. You know, way ahead, to get all your unburnt and burnt areas. I suppose that was one. Well, one good thing that came out of the, this this work is that we now know that they don't need eighty-year-old bush to live in. You know, ten years is probably quite good.

So that makes a lot easier to manage because then you can do some burning to exclude fire. Two People’s Bay just got to the point where was a bomb waiting to go off. So and it was, it was, there wasn't there was a plan to do some burning, but, I think everyone was a bit nervous about it, and we didn't get around to doing it at all before the big fire came up.