Animal sanctuary throws lifeline to vanishing species
National park in Western Australia’s Wheatbelt offers rare glimpse of endangered marsupials
Numbats, bilbies, woylies, quenda, malas and boodies may all sound like creatures found in a fantasy novel, but they are all real marsupials that are being given a helping hand to avoid extinction in one of Australia’s newest national parks.
Numbats have pointed noses, long tongues for catching insects and red-brown fur marked by white stripes. They are between 30cm and 45cm in length, including their bushy tails.
About 99 per cent of Australia’s numbat population has died out and there are less than 1,000 of these creatures left; they are headed for extinction because of habitat destruction and predation by foxes and feral cats.
However, the numbat is being given a safe haven in the Dryandra Woodland National Park, in Western Australia.
A two-hour drive southeast of the state capital, Perth, Dryandra, which was given national park status in January, comprises 280 sq km of pristine forest sprouting from rolling laterite hills.
Tourists are attracted by the park’s many walking trails, which pierce lush groves that are home to 24 mammal species, including the wonderfully named marsupials, kangaroos and possums; 100 types of bird, including eagles and cockatoos; and 850 species of plant.
Dryandra is particularly popular between June and October, when it’s cloaked in wildflowers, says Western Australia Parks and Wildlife Service’s Karrena Veltman, as she delicately handles a blue Lechenaultia blossom.
Western Australia is one of the world’s wild flower capitals, with 12,000 species, 60 per cent of which grow nowhere else on earth.
Dryandra has been a conservation woodland for many years, but its new national park status affords it even greater protection, provided by the Parks and Wildlife Service. It is one of at least half a dozen protected public parks established in the past two years across Australia, which now has more than 500 such places.
They are badly needed. Australian Aboriginals coexisted with the nation’s flora and fauna for 50,000 years before British colonisation, but the past 200 years has seen rampant clearing of land and the introduction of foreign, invasive species.
Only 7 per cent of bushland in Western Australia’s Wheatbelt, where Dryandra is located, remains intact, says Parks and Wildlife Service operations officer Raymond McKnight, and the numbat has only two key habitats left – Dryandra and the TonePerup Nature Reserve, which is 160km to the south, near the tourist towns of Manjimup, famed for its truffle farms, and Pemberton, renowned for its 60-metre-tall karri trees.
Dryandra staff largely avoid intervening in the day-to-day lives of its endangered marsupials, says McKnight, who has worked there for seven years. They do not feed or breed the creatures. Instead, park rangers work to maintain an ecosystem in which the animals can thrive on their own.
“Without a strong landscape, the fauna and flora here won’t exist in the long term,” McKnight says, as we wander through a
Without a strong landscape, the fauna and flora here won’t exist in the long term
RAYMOND MCKNIGHT, WILDLIFE OFFICER
gently swaying wandoo eucalyptus forest. McKnight, Veltman and their colleagues focus on regenerating the park’s flora, and controlling the threat of predators.
Dryandra’s marsupials have another guardian that hides in plain sight. Common throughout the southwestern part of Western Australia, Gastrolobium is also known as poison pea, Veltman says, as she identifies one of the genus of shrubs at the base of a white-trunked powder bark tree.
Loaded with sodium monofluoroacetate, the plant is heavily toxic. Numbats, woylies, bilbies and quenda long ago developed a tolerance to this poison but their enemies, recently introduced to Australia, have not.
Even if foxes and cats dodge Gastrolobium plants, they are still targeted by its poison, which rangers inject into meat left as bait throughout Dryandra.
Eight years ago, Dryandra hosted only 500 woylies, brushtailed marsupials that look like a cross between a possum and a miniature kangaroo. Now that number has boomed to 11,000, about a quarter of Australia’s total.
They are still not easy to spot in the wild, though. Like all of Dryandra’s marsupials, woylies are nocturnal. During the day, they typically remain in deep, narrow, protective burrows.
In the evening, however, visitors can see woylies, bilbies, quendas, malas and boodies at Dryandra’s Barna Mia Nocturnal Wildlife Experience Centre, a fenced-off patch of woodland illuminated by red lights which don’t disturb the marsupials.
Guides lead the way along the centre’s walking trail, shining red torchlight on marsupials collecting food and socialising.
In anticipation of it earning national park status, Dryandra’s tourism infrastructure was upgraded. Toilet and barbecue facilities can be found at the Old Mill Dam and Contine Hill, two starting points for some of the park’s 10 walking trails, which range from 1km to 12.5km and are largely flat and smooth.
Alternatively, the park has a 23km driving route that passes its most scenic points, and could prove a godsend when it gets too hot for hiking – temperatures at Dryandra can reach 40 degrees Celsius between December and February.
Dryandra also has two campgrounds with toilet and kitchen facilities, and its Lions Village has eight basic cottages, a dormitory, a communal kitchen and a hall for dining and meetings. More modern accommodation is available a 20-minute drive south, in the town of Narrogin.
“We’re really proud of this park,” McKnight says, as he leans on a eucalyptus tree. “There’s not many other places in the world where you can see numbats and woylies and bilbies, and this park is a big reason they are still alive and thriving.”