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First light on Mt Rothwell Biodiversity Centre, Little River Victoria.
With Australian wildlife under increasing pressure from global heating, habitat destruction and predators, the team hopes to use genetic research and DNA profiling to boost wild populations.”Our objective is to find solutions for threatened species decline and we do that in a number of ways,” says Annette Rypalski, the biodiversity director at the not-for-profit organisation, Odonata.
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Map of woodland habitat for Eastern Quoll sites
“We’re getting quite creative with our models but the basic building block starts with our captive breeding programs.” Odonata is a private conservation organisation that hopes to breed genetically stronger populations of certain species for reintroduction on private and public land across Australia.
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Project delivery coordinator Dale Crisp sets up monitoring for the night with rockmelon baits around various trapping locations.
They are working at existing wildlife safe havens, including Mt Rothwell and Tiverton in Victoria, and hope to have at least 30 sanctuaries established by 2030. Their current projects are focused on three imperilled species: eastern quolls, the southern brush-tailed rock wallaby and the eastern barred bandicoot.
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An endangered southern brush-tailed rock wallaby with joey.
Captive breeding is commonly used to try to boost species that have suffered major population decline. It’s a technique that was used, for example, to establish insurance populations of Tasmanian devils free of devil facial tumour disease. These programs try to breed captive populations that are as genetically diverse as possible, to give them the best chance of survival if and when they are released into the wild.
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Annette Rypalski and a southern brush-tailed rock wallaby.
Rypalski says Odonata is turning to these genetic tools to try to breed animals that are more physically fit and better able to withstand threats or outsmart predators.They work with researchers at universities, including the University of Melbourne, which has built a DNA database and provides scientific advice.
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Resident dingo ‘Chilli’. Chilli is one of two dingoes utilised by the Odonata team to hunt down foxes, rabbits and other feral species.
“Our ultimate goal is to get these species back into the landscape,” Ryplaski says. “We know what the tipping points for species are. We want to get to a point where we can build them up at landscape scale so they can tolerate some pressures and we can control others.”
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Field and information officer Sheryl Nettleton sets an eastern quoll trap before nightfall.
In the case of the eastern quoll, Odonata already had a captive population and used genetic research to work out where they had gaps to fill. The species is extinct on the mainland and found only in Tasmania. They had all of the populations in Tasmania genotyped and selected animals from families they didn’t have and added them to the captive groups.
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An eastern barred bandicoot being released onto the Merino sheep farm Tiverton, in Dundonnell Victoria.
They will then be used as founding populations for some of the planned new sanctuaries.”We’re bringing together populations that don’t currently have access to each other,” Rypaliski says.”It makes them breed more efficiently and be fitter and feistier and more successful overall.”
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Volunteer Joanne Greggains records species data on a night of eastern quoll trapping.
Odonata ultimately hopes to work with other organisations, including carbon farmers, to develop nature corridors where animals can be reintroduced into the wild.
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The padded feet of an endangered southern brush-tailed rock wallaby.
Rypalski says they are also starting to explore ways that genetic research might be used to make predators weaker.
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An eastern quoll gets released back onto Mt Rothwell Biodiversity Centre.
“We’re looking into the concept of how you de-evolutionise a fox,” she says. “It will help us learn what their weaknesses are. I guess in the end we want a friendly fox that might only eat rabbits and avoid native species.”
