Land for Wildlife – Red Tailed Phascogale discovery

Credit: Rob McMilliam

Land for Wildlife has over 2000 members across the state all working to protect the biodiversity of their patches of bush.

Recently a Land for Wildlife member in the south east Wheatbelt had an exciting discovery. A weekend fauna monitoring event was held with other Land for Wildlife members and the most commonly found mammal was the endangered Red Tailed Phascogale.

Red Tailed phascogales are a small carnivore which spend most of their time hunting in the trees. Wandoo and sheok woodlands are their favourite habitat.

They have largely disappeared across the Wheatbelt and survive in a number of nature reserves including Tutanning and Boyagin as well as being found on private land around the Brookton to Wagin area. However they haven’t been seen in this part of the Wheatbelt for some years.
The most exciting part of this discovery is that it shows that these small mammals do persist in small oasis of remnant bush land and until you go looking you might never know.
This land holder is now planning to implement a fox baiting regime to protect these animals.
For more information on this or on Land for Wildlife email Avril Baxter on: avril.baxter@dec.wa.gov.au

Interesting Fact: The male red-tailed phascogale invests so heavily in breeding that their immune systems fail, and just before they reach 12 months of age, they succumb to stress-related illnesses and die.