My night with the Bandicoot
I started the bushwalk only minutes before sunset.
As I entered the wildlife enclosure I was carefully watched by a mob of kangaroos.
The pelicans couldn't care less however.
The real reason I was here was because there was a chance I might get to encounter a small endangered marsupial, the Eastern Barred Bandicoot Perameles gunnii. I hadn't found it on my previous three visits (not that I was properly looking). It was the 23/1/26. The sun sets late in the summer, at nearly 9pm, and it only really becomes dark past 9:20pm. The bandicoot is strictly nocturnal.
The story of the Bandicoot is quite miraculous really. Having once occupied all of the Volcanic Plains Grasslands in south-west Victoria, its population was decimated by habitat destruction (from agricultural/urban developments) combined with predation by foxes and cats. So much so that they believed the species was extinct on mainland Australia. Only in Tasmania do Eastern Barred Bandicoots exist in the wild and hold out to this day. I didn't know this until now, but up until 2001, Tasmania was free of the Red Fox Vulpes vulpes, although different sources say different dates.
That was until the late 1980s when they discovered a mainland population of Eastern Barred Bandicoots at the Hamilton Tip, in Western Victoria! They were hiding in old car bodies, amongst the sheet metal, protecting them from predation.
The discovery of bandicoots at the tip spurred into action numerous captive breeding programs and wildlife reserves being set up across Victoria, including this one in Hamilton. Here I stood in a 103 Hectares, (roughly 1km by 1km) predator proof, fenced off area, known as the Hamilton Parklands Bandicoot Enclosure. The Eastern Barred Bandicoots were first released into the enclosure in 1989 and as of 2022, the population here was estimated to be 50-80 bandicoots.
I had now veered off the main walking track and into knee high Austrostipa rudis native grassland. The light continued to get darker.
You might think searching for bandicoots in an enclosure is sort of cheating. But these animals no longer exist in the wild (on mainland), not even at the Hamilton tip anymore. Also, it's not exactly easy to find these guinea pig sized bandicoots in the dead of night, in thick vegetation.
You may think, 'this is all very nice, a walk in the bush searching for the bandicoot', but to establish a bandicoot population in such an enclosure is no mean feat.
In the process of trying to research the history of the Hamilton enclosure, I ended up learning a lot about the history of another Eastern Barred Bandicoot Program that didn't go to plan.
Woodlands Historic Park: A lesson in population dynamics
Let say it's 1988, and you have just been given funding to start a conservation program for the Eastern Barred Bandicoot, at Woodlands Historic Park, 22km north of Melbourne. This is the first Bandicoot reintroduction program on mainland Australia (the Hamilton enclosure followed soon after in 89').
It has taken a lot of work. Not only have you taken bandicoots from the last remaining free-ranging mainland population (from Hamilton Tip) to captive breeding facilities at Woodlands, you have installed a 1.8m high predator-proof fence, built a 400 Hectare enclosure and finally removed all the foxes and cats (feral and domestic) that were inside - but you have done it! There's great grassland habitat available, you even copied what they did at the Hamilton tip, and included shelters made of corrugated iron and sleepers.
Well done, great job. From the captive breeding facilities, you release 88 Bandicoots into this enclosure.
Now imagine its 1993...
I will let the Eastern Barred Bandicoot Recovery Program Newsletter No. 3 describe what happened in the following years:
"By early 1993 rabbit numbers were estimated at 120 per hectare, the densest rabbit population ever recorded in Victoria. A baiting program in that year killed an estimated 48 thousand rabbits."
...Holy moly...
It turns out when you remove all the predators, the rabbit populations sky-rocket. If only they had removed the predator and rabbit populations initially, back in 1988, when this fence was built. Its these kind of problems, that in hindsight, sure you might be able to prevent, but you can see how quickly it can get out of hand and make conservation work so challenging.
So whilst the rabbit situation was crazy, thankfully the bandicoots also increased in numbers since 1988. By November 1993 the bandicoot population was at least 321, possibly over 500. Overall, 1993 was a successful year. There was a massive rabbit cull and the bandicoot population was increasing.
Between 1994 and 1996, the bandicoot population was going so strong at Woodlands, there were even removals of individuals for translocation into conservation programs elsewhere.
Keep moving forward in time, and hang on, is anyone keeping check of those Eastern Grey Kangaroos? Here comes 1997, and there are in-excess of 1000 kangaroos in the enclosure (when 400 kangaroos was considered to be the absolute limit). The grazing pressure exerted by the high density of kangaroos, combined with the drought of that year, drastically reduced habitat availability for the bandicoot and increased the competition for remaining food and resources.
The result?
By April 1998 only one or two Eastern Barred Bandicoots were confirmed alive.
This is horrible. What sort of conservation program is this? Take me back to 1993 you might think to yourself.
Okay, you can stop imagining yourself as a 90s Bandicoot Conservation Manager
All of the above highlights how hard it is to keep population dynamics in check when you have enclosed predator proof fences. It can swing drastically and unpredictably. I don't believe its an ideal solution for any animal that's inside. In many instances you have to start playing 'god' to keep populations of native and introduced animals under control. The ethics of which you may even start to question. I also believe that if you want your enclosure to not become a 'zoo', housing endangered animals, you must make the long term goal to be re-establishing populations back into the wild. These predator-proof enclosures should only be considered as insurance populations, ideally to bolster the wild populations and possibly increase genetic diversity, mixing individuals from different populations.
Back to the night
After walking for an hour and a half, it was getting pretty dark.
There was a smaller, much more inaccessible dam. Separated from the nearest track by about 500m, and dense vegetation. It was calming to take a rest here for a while.
I sort of came to the conclusion this might be where I turn and make my way back to the car. It was very dark now. Not that this concerned me too much.
And then from nowhere. A small tussling sound. A trampling noise as something walks over leaf litter - just like I do, but instead much quieter. I suddenly became aware of how loud I was when moving through all the vegetation. I follow the sound with my ears, and walk very slowly and as gently as I can towards the sound. Then it I hear a sudden movement, breaking fast away. Could that have been the Bandicoot?
I try to search for it again, but the sound is gone. The sound was really the only sense I could use. I had lost whatever that was.
I continue walking back to the car, of course thinking about if that was or was not the bandicoot. I do have to stop fairly regularly to work out where I am going, and turn my phone light on and off every now and then. Due to the experience I just had, I felt so exposed whenever I turned my phone light on. As if all the animals would quickly run away when they see this beam of light approaching them. I would rather walk in darkness. So I tried to keep it turned off as much as I could.
I stop again.
Then I hear that same sound. The tussling sound... for a moment in the darkness do I see something move? Is that what I think it is? Do I dare turn the phone light on again? Prehaps it would scare and run away. Maybe it would be better to just use my night adapted vision (that at this stage was really struggling). I have to know, so I decided to turn my phone light on again. I just couldn't die wondering and had to confirm what it was.
An Eastern Barred Bandicoot only 5m away from me. It was suddenly clear.
I didn't want to stun the bandicoot, with the flash of the camera. So I set the camera to hand-held night time mode. Even in this mode it was almost impossible to capture. This mode takes four photos in quick succession, and somehow combines the exposure from all of them. In comparison to a long-exposure shot, this makes your images not as blurred from your own movement. The result were the following photos.
In the future I would bring a head torch with red light, that is maybe a bit softer and better for viewing the bandicoot.
The original image:
After some post processing:
Another original image:
After some post processing:
It was a pretty incredible experience.