News and Media Releases
Here's Lookin' At You: Gale Akerman from Monarto Zoo with Kupinya, an endangered black-flanked rock wallaby. Picture Matt Turner.
21 Oct 2008
We need to get wild about rock wallabies
Adelaide Advertiser - Page 1 - Cara Jenkin, Environment Reporter
A tiny population of rock wallabies has been boosted by more than a quarter in the past 18 months by a surrogate breeding program at Monarto Zoo.
Only 70 black-flanked rock wallabies are believed to exist in the wild in two locations in the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Lands, in the state's far northwest.
But 20 of the species, which also go by the indigenous name Warru, have been raised at Monarto Zoo by taking them from their mothers' pouches and placing them in the pouches of yellow-footed rock wallaby surrogate mothers.
International zoo leaders meeting in Adelaide yesterday heard climate change would test the physiological limits and tolerance levels of animals and human society.
University of Adelaide climate change Professor Barry Brook said humans were "at risk of using up all our resources".
"We are at a stage of exponential use ... with a build-up of waste, and the extracting of natural resources including timber, depletion of soils and enrichment through the input of agricultural produce," Professor Brook said.
He said a high number of all endangered species in South-East Asia would be lost in the not-too-distant future if deforestation continued at current rates.
Adelaide and Monarto zoos' chief executive, Dr Chris West, last week told The Advertiser SA's zoos were becoming "field hospitals in a war zone" as they tried to save species threatened by climate change.
Environment and Heritage Department regional ecologist Amber Clarke said the population of black-flanked rock wallabies was now at stronger numbers than researchers had hoped when the program began in May last year.
"A couple of years ago, we thought they would go extinct in a couple of years' time," Ms Clarke said. A recent count found four baby wallabies living in the wild - the first time in three years youngsters had been found alive in the population.
Funding for the recovery project is expected to run out by Christmas but Nature Foundation SA will today launch an appeal to raise funds to ensure the project can continue.
Donations can be made at www.naturefoundation.org.au or by calling 8340 2880.