By Matthew Sims
Grassland management advocates have joined forces with scientific researchers to urge the state government to list the fat-tailed dunnart as vulnerable, following ongoing habitat loss among the grasslands of the Victorian Volcanic Plain, including in Wyndham.
The state government’s Scientific Advisory Committee has recommended to list the marsupial from the same family as the Tasmanian Devil and the quoll as vulnerable under the Fauna and Flora Guarantee Act, with Environment Minister Ingrid Stitt and Agriculture Minister Gayle Tierney expected to make a decision on whether to accept the recommendation by the end of April.
Grassy Plains Network facilitator Adrian marshall said the dunnart’s habitat was under threat from the growth of the urban sprawl and development, as well as cropping methodds such as rock and shelter-belt removal, ploughing, drainage modification, fertilising, biocide use and unnatural burning regimes.
“The Victorian Volcanic Plains were once home to bandicoots, potoroos, quolls, bilbies, marsupial mice and more,” he said.
“The vast majority of these never-to-be-seen-again creatures relied on grassland habitat.
“The last surviving small marsupial of the grasslands is now on the road to extinction.”
La Trobe University Research Centre for Future Landscapes PhD candidate Emily Scicluna said the fat-tailed dunnart is a 15-gram small carnivorous marsupial, with the situation in protecting the marsupial now “critical”.
“Without listing the fat-tailed dunnart as vulnerable, we could lose yet another precious Australian marsupial to extinction,” she said.
“After that crucial first step, we need an action plan to save the dunnart within six months and a commitment to crunching long-term data to work out where its strongholds are.
“In under 200 years we have decimated the once-bountiful grasslands of the Victorian Volcanic Plain after traditional custodians cared for the environment for 60,000 years.”
Ms Scicluna said the largest known fat-tailed dunnart population in Victoria used to exist at the Western Treatment Plant in Werribee.
“When I went to survey, 75 per cent of appropriate habitat (known to support fat-tailed dunnarts) and the 25 per cent remaining was heavily degraded,” she said.
“After a year of surveying I found no signs of the species remaining.
“The fat-tailed dunnarts used to occur everywhere across Wyndham and Melbourne’s west; they were a commonly occurring species but they are not any longer.”
