RESCUING THE CHUDITCH

After intensive planning, recovery for this endangered marsupial species is being stepped up to secure its future.

- KAREN MCGHEE

EVER HEARD OF a chuditch? Judging by the species’ huge natural range, which includes every mainland state and territory, it should be as familiar to most Australians as the emu or koala. But unless you live near Perth in Western Australia, you’re unlikely to have ever heard of this charismatic little spotted marsupial.

The chuditch is another of those small-to-medium-sized mammals that only occurs in Australia, but has been almost completely wiped out during the past 200 years. Their natural distribution has been reduced by more than 90 per cent since European settlement and its last remaining natural strongholds are a handful of isolated populations south of Perth.

A few limited translocations earlier this century saw the chuditch reintroduced to South Australia, although it remains endangered there. And the species continues to be either extinct or presumed extinct in the Northern Territory, New South Wales, Queensland and Victoria.

After a decade of planning, in 2023 Australian Wildlife Conservancy (AWC) carried out the first of f ive planned translocations to Mt Gibson Wildlife Sanctuary, 350km northeast of Perth, of animals caught from remnant wild chuditch populations near Perth. It was the start of an ambitious plan that might one day lead to the species being re-established across much of its former range.

MAMMAL REINTRODUCTIONS HAVE been a key feature of management for the Mt Gibson sanctuary and crucial to this has been the property's large predator-free enclosure. Almost 8000ha of the property's most intact habitat has been protected within a 43km x 1.82m specially designed feral-proof fence.