A colleague drew my attention to the recent posts about a pale-tailed kangaroo on Black Mt (which was a female Wallaroo) and there is also Matthew’s recent photo from Nass of a male Wallaroo. I thought there may be some interest in the
following observations about Wallaroos and albino/leucistic Eastern Grey Kangaroos in the ACT.
When I came to Canberra in the mid 1970s there was only one place to see Wallaroos reliably and that was the same place Matthew photographed his male, (then) Rolley Gregory’s lucerne paddock at the base of Fitz Hill. Winter evenings were
the right time, providing the paddock was not full of feral goats. Little has changed there except the paddock is now Matt Gregory’s and goats are much less often seen. In the 1970s Wallaroos were also reported occasionally at Mt Eliza. (Goats, stated by
some writers to compete with Wallaroos, were much reduced in abundance throughout the mountains of the ACT in the 1980s and 1990s by Brian Terrill’s determined helicopter shooting of surprisingly large numbers. The program was not publicised. I believe
that subsequent recovery of feral goats has been prevented mainly by dingo predation plus a little illegal hunting and occasional government shooting of the small mobs which invade from the south and south west).
From the 1980s to the present, Wallaroos spread. Now they are increasingly familiar in Canberra Nature Park as well as more widely distributed in Namadgi. They even have managed to invade sites occupied by high density food-limited populations
of Eastern Grey Kangaroos. Tuggeranong Hill is probably now the most reliable (and delightful) place to observe Wallaroos in the ACT and they are also relatively common on Isaacs Ridge. There are small populations on Mt Taylor and other southern hills, Black
Mt, Ainslie-Majura, western Belconnen, Goorooyarroo and presumably elsewhere. But Wallaroos are even less well known to the Canberra public than the two common wallabies. The pale grey females are normally misidentified as EGKs and the dark brown /charcoal
males are sometimes passed off as large Black Wallabies(Swamp Wallabies).
A person recently employed to count eastern grey kangaroos at Goorooyaroo has several times sighted kangaroos that are reportedly not female wallaroos (which she also has seen there) yet have white fur on their ears, necks and tails. This
has yet to be confirmed by anyone else but one possibility is that these are leucistic, ie partial albino, EGKs. I reckon albino EGKs are probably occurring at a rate between 1 in 10,000 and one in 50,000 EGKs in the ACT region, because at any time there
are several examples present, but reports of leucistic kangaroos in our region are rarer. So it will be interesting to see if this one is confirmed.
A final comment: Albino wallaroos have been reported, including from near Bathurst, and albino Red-necked Wallabies are common especially on Bruny Island, but so far the only macropods reported to exhibit leucism or albinism in the ACT
have been EGK’s, as far as I know.
cheers
Don Fletcher
