Conservationists and researchers say there is new hope for WA’s endangered chuditch, with the launch of a trial to install eDNA devices in the Wheatbelt.
The small marsupial, also known as the western quoll, is WA’s largest endemic mammalian carnivore. It was once found across 70 per cent of Australia but the population has dropped to less than 10,000 due to shrinking habitats, feral animals, illegal poisoning and vehicle collisions.
Wheatbelt Natural Resource Management project officer Karen Carter and her team have been attaching pipes to trees with cloths inside, which capture airborne DNA from the surrounding environment and wildlife.
“We attach them with an occy strap so there is no damage; it is very low impact and doesn’t take a lot of resources,” she says.
“There’s no hours of looking through camera footage, no setting traps and trying to locate animals that way.
“It saves time and resources and hopefully we’ll detect some chuditch.”
The non-profit group is running workshops in Brookton, Newdegate, Narembeen, Merredin and Mukinbudin to tell locals about the trial and encourage them to step up their own conservation efforts.
“We were able to take them out into the bushland and install some of the devices,” Mrs Carter says.
“The main purpose is to engage with the community, let them know who we are, what they can do, and get them excited about conservation.”
A lot of humans don’t view the rest of nature as important as our needs, so it takes organisations like this and the people who came to our event to really put themselves out there and protect nature for nature’s sake.
Karen Carter, WNRM project officer
Mrs Carter says part of the problem is working with the boundaries of different farms in the area.
“The chuditch rely on a huge area of land and with habitat fragmentation, especially in the wheatbelt with paddocks, it’s not easy for them to navigate and cross with vehicles and other predators around,” she says.
“So if landholders are unable to fence off vegetation or maybe have bushland suitable, this is something we can help with through funding.”
Rarely seen, the chuditch is known as a solitary nocturnal species that is notoriously hard to track.
Curtin University TrEnd Lab research fellow Nicole White says by collecting eDNA, scientists can figure out where chuditch are living in the wild without disturbing their habitat.
“If you can get confirmation saying chuditch DNA has been detected in four of the thirty soil samples, then we can say we know it’s present, but the other question is how long does DNA last in the environment?” she says.
Dr White likens searching for chuditch DNA to finding a needle in a haystack.
“You’ve got the haystack, which is a big soup of DNA in that environmental sample and the needle is there; it’s the species of interest,” she says.
“You design genetic markers that are basically like a magnet that is going to pull out the needle – which is the chuditch DNA – if it exists in that sample.
“We report our results and then it’s up to the conservation agencies how they use that information to make the decisions for conservation, habitat restoration or feral animal eradication to support the native population.”
Dr White says advances in DNA sequencing mean researchers can now collect multiple samples.
“It has allowed us to take tissue from not just one animal, but a soil sample, gut content, scat analysis or water,” she says.
“With this sequencing technology, we can filter that sample and extract all of the DNA and sequence it all at once.”
EnviroDNA program manager Josh Griffiths says while the technology is new, similar projects in Melbourne have been successful.
“What we’re doing with the wheatbelt group is really breaking new ground and trying to understand how airDNA can be effectively implemented to understand local biodiversity,” he says.
“We know that it can work, but how well it’s going to work and for what different species and under what conditions is all a little bit unknown at the moment.”
Wheatbelt local and workshop attendee Bindi Gentle has a soft spot for the chuditch, after finding and releasing one of them on her property 15 years ago.
“We only sighted her about three or four times afterwards, but we know she had five babies and we are just hoping we can track her descendents to the surrounding farms,” she says.
“They’re the original inhabitants and as farmers we are sick of foxes and rabbits, so I hope we can bring back these native species, especially native predators and hopefully get some balance back into the ecosystem.”
WNRM, which is funded by the Australian Government Natural Heritage Trust, will hold more workshops in coming weeks.
Categories: Animals, Environment, Feature Slider