#1743 - Notamacropus irma - Western Brush Wallaby
Work sent me out to two country towns yesterday, and following the Google Maps directions between them took me into a complete maze of fire trails in the forests behind the Darling Escarpment. Just as well the van didn’t break down, and that I had enough of a GPS signal that I didn’t get hopelessly lost halfway.
But there was ome compensation - coming around a corner and seeing one of these. It seemed utterly horrified to see me.
Illustration by John Gould - “Mammals of Australia”, Vol. II Plate 21, published in 1861. Gould’s works on Australian birds and mammals are justly famous.
Western Brush Wallabies, AKA Black-gloved wallaby or kwoora, kwara, or koora, used to be quite common in the SW corner of the continent especially around what is now Perth, but upon the arrival of Europeans unrestrained hunting, clear-felling, and the introduction of red foxes swiftly reduced their numbers to less than 10 every 100 square kilometers in 1970, and 1 per 100 sq.km. by 1990. And that’s in ideal tall open forest with open, seasonally wet areas. These days you’re only likely to see one as roadkill. Fox baiting has greatly helped their recovery.
Their closet relatives used to be the toolache wallaby Macropus greyi , from SE Australia, but Europeans had driven that species extinct by 1939 - with 10 of the last 14 accidentally killed during an attempt to capture them for captive breeding.
Adult Kwoora are only 80cm tall (the main reason the joeys are so vulnerable to foxes) and unusually diurnal for a kangaroo. Little is known about their behaviour and even their preferred diet and feeding habits is debated, but they don’t appear to need standing water.