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The greater bilby (Macrotis lagotis) is once again roaming the sand dunes of the Roxby Downs region. 

Twenty bilbies were released recently outside the feral-proof Arid Recovery Reserve, in the exciting final stage of a long-running project.

Introduced predators such as the feral cat and European fox have been the main cause of Australia ’s mammal extinctions.  Although bilbies are classed as vulnerable, there are still pockets of them surviving on mainland Australia .  Arid Recovery conducted a trial release in 2004 to monitor the survival of the greater bilby outside the Arid Recovery Reserve where feral predators existed.  Feral cats were found to be the main predator of the bilby, but some bilbies still survived and produced young, which lead to the questions; ‘are some bilbies more predator-aware?’ and ‘would it be possible to “train” a bilby to become predator-aware to give it a better chance of survival?’

In 2005 this question was tested using bilbies that had been trained with cat urine (‘pongo’) and bilbies that had not.  Trained bilbies were captured then sprayed with pongo in the hope that they would associate the feline scent with the capture making it an unpleasant experience.  Interestingly, the bilbies that were trained with the pongo behaved differently to the bilbies that had not been trained.  Trained bilbies used more burrows and moved burrows more regularly than untrained bilbies, suggesting that bilbies could be trained to recognise the smell of cats and to associate it with a previous unpleasant experience.   

The current bilby release brings these two projects together.

Ten trained, and ten untrained bilbies were released outside the Arid Recovery reserve in the hope that they survive and breed to successfully establish a population of wild bilbies in the Roxby Downs Region.   Justine Smith, a scholarship student assisting with the project said “seeing bilby tracks alongside rabbit tracks out there is very heartening”.

The survival of these bilbies will be monitored every day and we will be waiting anxiously to see whether the trained bilbies out-smart the feral cat and prosper for generations!  

More Info:
www.aridrecovery.org.au

Arid Recovery is a joint initiative of BHP Billiton, the South Australian Department for Environment & Heritage, the University of Adelaide and the community group Friends of Arid Recovery. This project was also supported by funding from the SAAL NRM Board.