By Jeremy Cook
Scurrying through thick forest floor about a half hour’s drive east of Warwick are a species of small rat-like kangaroos slowly succumbing to the whim of Australia’s ravenous feral predators.
The long-nosed potoroo, like many other Australian mammals, has had to contend for survival with growing numbers of non-native species introduced since European settlement.
The potoroo is a marsupial and has a close biological relationship with kangaroos, yet its pointed nose and grey-brown fur has it resembling more of a bandicoot.
The forestry and shrubland across southeastern Australia and Tasmania which it usually inhabits have come increasingly under threat from human interference, and it’s left the species in a precarious place.
In Queensland, where it inhabits a variety of environments along the coast and the Great Dividing Range, the small marsupial is listed as “vulnerable” under the state’s environmental protection laws.
At Main Range National Park, located approximately 45 kilometres east of Warwick, potooroos live a similarly vulnerable life. It’s what a group of ecologists will soon hope to change as part of a $100,000 conservation project, driven in part by artificial intelligence.
“They’re very threatened but they fly under the radar a bit,” Gold Coast ecologist Paul Revie said.
“It should be a really exciting project,” Mr Revie said.
Potoroo populations in the northern section of the park, near Goomburra, will be monitored by Mr Revie and his team at Friends of Parks Queensland. His team will use a deadly AI monitoring device called a Felixer which sprays a toxic gel that when licked, is lethal for feral cats and foxes.
“As animals walk past in front, [the Felixer] can actually identify what the animal is, so they can tell cats and foxes apart from things like quolls, possums, koalas,” he said.
“If they do detect a cat or a fox, they’ll actually spit a little glob of poison gel on them. They’ll lick up that poison and that will be the end of them.”
For potoroos, Mr Revie said ecologists know “their big threats are predation by cats and foxes,” but also “inappropriate fire regimes”.
“If we are picking up a lot of invasive pet animals, then we’ll go in and try to control those just to take a bit of the pressure off those potoroo populations,” he said.
The Felixer has already been trialled in other parts of the country, in mostly arid areas, and was approved by federal authorities for feral cat management in early-2023. It will be used to reduce the impact of feral cats and foxes in Main Range.
Ecologists will also develop a fire burning regime, alongside the state’s parks and wildlife service, to strengthen potoroo habitat.
Long-nosed potoroos are nocturnal and thrive on the fungi which lies beneath the forest’s thick groundcover.
Mr Revie said recently burnt forestry can make for “really good” foraging areas and hoped by implementing a burning strategy, ecologists could create “some really healthy habitat” for the marsupial.
“They eat a lot of underground fungi … they dig that up, turn over the soil and that’s really good for the ecosystem as well,” he said.
“By identifying where those important populations are, we can have a look at the habitat, go and talk to QPWS&P and sort of come up with a fire regime that’s going to work for the potoroos.”
Mr Revie will finish up some work at Girraween National Park near Stanthorpe, before starting up north in Main Range. He said conservationists had actually spotted long-nosed potoroos on camera in Girraween for the first time last year.
The potoroo project was put together not long after and though Girraween will remain untouched, two other locations, at both Springbrook and Crow’s Nest National Park will also be targeted.
As of 2022, potoroos were just one of 1026 species listed as either vulnerable, endangered, critically endangered or extinct, a Queensland government report into biodiversity conservation revealed.
The report noted approximately 341 plants and animals had been added to the state’s threatened species list since 2007, warning “we could see the extinction of at least another dozen mammal and bird species in Queensland” over the next two decades.
Mr Revie said predator control programs like what will soon launch at Main Range do not “operate in isolation”, and likened Queensland’s biodiversity loss to a jenga tower.
“You can pull out pieces here and there, the tower will stay up but one day, you’re going to pull out that piece that causes the whole tower to come crumbling down,” he said.
“We need to conserve every single block that makes up that tower.”
