Native marsupial helping revive urban bushland in Perth's north

March 26, 2019, University of Western Australia

A native marsupial population that was successfully relocated to a pocket of urban bushland in the northern suburb of Craigie is now helping to regenerate the bush.

Dr. Leonie Valentine, a research fellow with UWA's School of Biological Sciences, is leading the research project to monitor and assess the quenda, a species of bandicoot endemic to south-western WA. Quenda numbers have historically declined due to habitat loss and predation by feral and domestic animals.

Dr. Valentine said the project involved working with WA's Department of Biodiversity Conservation and Attractions to relocate 43 quenda in 2013 after the City of Joondalup installed a predator-proof fence around Craigie bushland in 2010. Funding was provided by the National Environmental Science Programme: Threatened Species Recovery Hub.

"We've been monitoring the quenda to assess their health and measure the population and what we've found is that from the original 43 individuals, the numbers have grown and we've identified an extra 120 quenda. They're all in excellent health and they seem to be breeding well," she said.

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Quenda quest: volunteers take stock of Perth's 'lovely' backyard marsupials

For a week each spring about 140 people record every animal they spot to help researchers understand the health of a population threatened by cats and foxes

Calla Wahlquist

Tuesday 6 October 2015 22.20 BSTLast modified on Tuesday 6 October 201522.21 BST

In backyards across the suburban fringe of Perth, people have been excitedly checking for cone-shaped divots in preparation for the annual spring quenda count, which is in its third year.

Quendas are a subspecies of the southern brown bandicoot, a small, ground-dwelling marsupial that has been hunted to critically low numbers by cats and foxes in south-eastern Australia.

But in Western Australia, particularly in the “tree-change” suburbs that cling to the edge of the Darling Scarp on the eastern fringe of Perth, the quendas are holding their own. For a week each spring, about 140 people who regularly spot the animals make a record of every quenda they see on their properties, trying to distinguish between individuals.

That data, which is collated by WWF Australia, is then sent to the WA Department of Parks and Wildlife and is used to form a picture of the long-term sustainability of the population.

One of those counters is Christine Tapsell. She joined the first community quenda survey in 2012 – the precursor to the annual spring count – after stumbling across what looked like a large, rotund rat one night when locking her chickens away.

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