18 April – 1 May 2011
Location: Great Victoria Desert, Western Australia.
Perth Zoo Field Workers: Cathy Lambert (Native Species Breeding Program Keeper), Josh Laming (Horticulturist) and Sean Wilkin (Australian Fauna Keeper)
A desert is the last place you’d expect to have to make a quick getaway due to flooding but three Perth Zoo staff had to cut their field work short for just that reason.
Flooding in the desert. Photo by Josh Laming.
Earlier this year, Josh, Sean and I took a long drive out to the northern edge of WA’s Great Victoria Desert, 1300 km from Perth. We all had our own reasons for making the journey but the one thing that bonded us together was a desire to see this amazing part of Australia after the drought had broken.
I searched for Sandhill Dunnarts. Nine times over the past 10 years, I’ve headed to this part of Australia to learn more about these little known Australian animals. The Sandhill Dunnart is a small, endangered, carnivorous marsupial. They are currently found in only a handful of isolated locations in Western Australia and South Australia. Between 2000 and 2008, we found 17 Sandhill Dunnarts, and some were brought back to Perth Zoo. We learned about their husbandry and reproduction and successfully bred 15 Sandhill Dunnarts, a world first.
Flowering Spinifex. Photo by Cathy Lambert.
Since then, a former Zoo colleague, myself and other Perth Zoo staff have returned to the desert to record locations of Sandhill Dunnarts in an attempt to further determine their distribution. This helps their conservation because if we know where they are found, recovery teams can make decisions based on this information, in particular determining if there is enough habitat available for them.
We selected three sites to monitor. Unfortunately, the first two yielded no Sandhill Dunnarts. The third site looked excellent but we didn’t get the chance to explore further. The rains came hard and fast and we had to make a quick decision whether to leave or stay. To stay meant the risk of being stranded there for an extra week or longer, so we made the sensible choice and drove out. The water quickly flooded in behind us and over the road. We’ll have to go back again soon to check that site as it looked promising.
Thorny Devil. Photo by Sean Wilkin.
Following many poor seasons with little rain, the desert looked very impressive this year. The heavy rains resulted in an abundance of plant growth. Almost all of the Spinifex was seeding prolifically, something I’d never seen before, providing plenty of food for many animals.
There were budgerigars rearing chicks in every Marble Gum hollow. After it rained, thousands of frogs emerged to take advantage of the water to mate and lay eggs. We also found some marsupials including some I’d never seen in the wild before – a Mulgara and a Fat-tailed Dunnart.
Even though I didn’t find any Sandhill Dunnarts, the other Zoo staff on the trip didn’t come away empty-handed. Both Sean and Josh had permits from the Department of Environment and Conservation to collect invertebrates and seeds.
Hairy-footed Dunnart. Photo by Sean Wilkin.
Sean spent time searching the dunes for scorpion burrows in the sand, under leaf litter and fallen branches as well as searching at night with a torch, to add to the invertebrate collection at the Zoo. The desert scorpions appear to fluoresce better under UV light than the scorpions in the Perth region. You can see this in the Nocturnal House.
Josh collected a variety of seeds and plant cuttings from some very special, drought adapted desert plants. The area is well known for its variety of Spinifex, Eremophila, Grevillea and Acacia species. He didn’t collect as much as he hoped because we had to leave early. However, he still brought back a lot of seed and this is being grown at the Zoo now.
Even though we didn’t get everything done that we planned, the trip was well worth the effort. It was amazing to see such a harsh environment in a totally different light. I love getting out there and seeing what I can find and discovering new things. I can’t wait to go back, even if it does rain.
