Attempts to boost the numbat population

Attempts to boost the numbat population in Western Australia have taken another step forward with the release of a batch of the marsupials in the jarrah forest near Collie. 

Environment Minister Jim McGinty said that officers from the Department of Conservation and Land Management today released 15 numbats near Collie, after intensive fox control in the area. 

"The numbats will join threatened species such as woylies, bandicoots and chuditch in Collie's Batalling Forest," Mr McGinty said.

"The recently released 'State of the Environment Report' showed that 11 species of native marsupials have become extinct in Western Australia since European settlement - we can not let this number increase," he said.

"The released numbats were taken from a thriving population at Dryandra Forest in the Wheatbelt - where numbers have increased more than twentyfold since 1979. 

"As well as protecting the animals' last strongholds at Dryandra and Perup Nature Reserve near Manjimup, CALM researchers are establishing populations at Karroun Hill Nature Reserve, north of Merredin, and Tutanning Nature Reserve, north-east of Narrogin." 

Mr McGinty said CALM researchers were now surveying the jarrah forest around metropolitan Perth and as far south as Manjimup, including Collie and Bunbury, for remnant populations of numbats. 

Numbats have also been successfully re-introduced to Boyagin Nature Reserve near Brookton, where they became extinct in the late 1970s. 

"Thirty-five numbats were released at Boyagin by CALM following fox control measures there and were radio-tracked and monitored to see how they survived," Mr McGinty said. 

"Today the population is more than 80, and a survey last month showed that numbats have moved across farmland to the western half of the reserve," he said.

"However, despite these successes, there is still a long way to go before numbats can be taken off the threatened species list. Numbats have proved difficult to breed in captivity and their overall numbers in the wild are still fairly low. 

"These marsupials were once common in parts of the south-west and day-trippers used to be able to see them feeding besides bushland tracks. 

"Intervention by CALM scientists may one day make it possible for bush visitors to see wild numbats regularly once again." 

Mr McGinty said public sightings of numbats and other threatened species such as bandicoots and chuditch were vital for CALM to be able to gather knowledge on where these animals still exist.