World News – UA – Wallabies roam free in Great Britain

When you think of kangaroos and wallabies, you probably don’t think of the temperate climate, unstable climate and farmland of England Yet on such pastures the red-necked wallaby has found a home

Red-necked wallabies have been around Britain for over a century, originally imported for zoos and private collections where they were popular attractions

However, they also proved to be escape artists who were adaptable enough to survive in the British countryside.

Many were intentionally released during WWII, as custodians and collectors had other priorities

This increased the number of wildlife in Britain and eventually a population established itself in the Peak District (although it has probably been extinct since 2009)

Wild wallabies continue to be recorded across Britain, however, with occasional sightings in a garden, country road or along a highway making local and sometimes national news

Yet other than the occasional and high-profile article, no one seems to have really paid attention in recent years

This oversight may seem understandable; while kangaroos can be human-sized, these wallabies are « just » cute, beagle-sized herbivores

However, the introduction of invasive non-native species can have substantial impacts on established native or extant species, and wallabies are no exception In New Zealand, introduced red-necked and tammar wallabies compete against each other. with sheep for grazing and harmed native plants that evolved in the absence of large animals that would eat them There, wallabies are often subject to both lethal and non-lethal population management

To know what impact a population of wallabies might have in Britain, we must first determine where wild wallabies might be found, how often they are recorded and if there are current and established populations.

Two years ago we started answering some of these questions by collecting data from news reports, social media and public data repositories for the period 2008-2018 We created a website for that people submit comments

It was important to account for returning escapees, of course, so that any wallabies confirmed to be returned to their owners were reduced. It was also important to ensure that the sightings were in fact wallabies, and not a muntjac (a small non-native deer) or a misidentified domestic cat, so only confirmed sightings or those that were accompanied by images were accepted

From this simple data, now published in the journal Ecology and Evolution, we mapped the distribution of wallaby sightings across Britain

We recorded a total of 95 confirmed sightings between 2008 and 2018 Most were in the south of England, like this one in Kent:

The Chiltern Hills in West London was a particular hot spot.It is impossible to say if this represents an actual settled or established population

Many more sightings were recorded in August than any other month. Why could it be? Maybe there are more escapees this time of year, for one reason or another Maybe wallabies are just more active in the summer, or maybe potential human observers are

Perhaps the species breeds in the wild and the young animals disperse far from their mothers

The Peak District population has persisted long enough for the animals to certainly breed.Additionally, we have recovered two recordings of wallabies with young (joeys) in the sleeve

The two were from the same approximate location in Cornwall, but occurred a year apart, in 2009 and 2010

It could easily be a coincidence, or it could indicate that wallabies are becoming established in the British countryside

Our research sheds new light on wild wallabies in Britain but, as always with a study of this nature, it also asks more questions than it answers

For example, could they negatively impact native British plants? They mainly eat grasses, roots and leaves and are said to be in competition with hares, rabbits and sheep

They could even exacerbate the growing impacts of muntjac deer That said, wallabies are unlikely to be as destructive to vegetation in Britain as in New Zealand although they are not native, mammalian pressure on grazing is an established process in UK ecosystems

Wild wallabies can also be carriers of diseases transmissible to other species or to humans, such as leishmaniasis, fascioliasis and salmonella Marsupials are considered important hosts of Leishmania species of parasites and a study found that more than a quarter of orphaned juvenile wallabies were infected with salmonella

These are important issues of conservation and management interest, both for wallabies and other wildlife in Britain

Anthony Caravaggi is Lecturer in Conservation Biology at the University of South Wales Holly English is a PhD candidate in Movement Ecology at University College Dublin This article originally appeared on The Conversation

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Wallaby, UK, Red-necked Wallaby, Marsupials