A soft-walled double-layered trap for capture of swamp wallabies Wallabia bicolor.

Abstract

SINCE the development of soft-walled traps suitable for the capture of small to medium-sized macropodids (Kinnear et al. 1988; Pollock and Montague 1991), traps of similar design have been used to capture swamp wallabies (Wallabia bicolor) by a number of workers (Wood 2002; Ben-Ami 2005; Paplinska 2005; B Parker, pers. comm.). Although immobilising drugs delivered by syringe darts have also been used to capture W. bicolor successfully (Troy et al. 1992), this species is difficult to dart relative to other similar sized wallabies (Wood 2002), and once darted can be hard to find within its often densely vegetated habitat (Pollock and Montague 1991). The difficulty of locating drugged animals in dense vegetation or steep terrain also makes the use of bait laced with diazepam or alpha chloralose (e.g., Norbury et al. 1994) impractical. Other capture techniques, such as stunning and netting (e.g., Taggart et al. 2003) are also rendered ineffective due to the habitat selected by this species.