ADU travels, expeditions and events

Running with Kangaroos and Aussie Islands

Photo J. Cooper The Rottnest Shuttle arriving from the island

In October I made my annual visit to Australia to attend a meeting of the Working Group on Incidental Mortality Arising from Longline Fishing (WG-IMALF) of the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) in Hobart, Tasmania. Over a period of 10 days, working group members from Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, United Kingdom and the USA calculated how many seabirds had been killed by both the legal and illegal longline fisheries in the Southern Ocean. This annual assessment is used by CCAMLR to set fishery regulations, such as closed seasons, in an endeavour to reduce the mortality that is placing a number of species of southern albatrosses and petrels at serious risk.

On my way to Hobart, I made a stop-over of a few days in Canberra to visit old friends, but also to discuss progress with government officials of Environment Australia on the coming into force of the Agreement for the Conservation of Albatrosses and Petrels (ACAP). The final text for the Agreement was negotiated in Cape Town earlier in the year, with the Avian Demography Unit running the Secretariat for the meeting. To date Australia and New Zealand have ratified ACAP, and it is expected that South Africa will do so early in the New Year.

Barry Watkins, John Cooper and Barry Baker waiting for penguins on Bruny

In Canberra I discovered (but not to my surprise) that Eastern Grey Kangaroos can hop faster than I can run, while exploring the nature reserve that backs on the outlying suburbs where I was staying. I also visited a small game and bird park, where I watched the bizarre “paddle-steamer” display of a male Musk Duck.

During a weekend break in Hobart, several of us made an excursion to Bruny Island, taking a hire car across by ferry and spending the day birding. From the lighthouse at the southern end of Bruny we could see the tiny (2.5 ha) island of Pedra Branca on the horizon, the most southerly land of continental Australia. Pedra Branca supports colonies of Australasian Gannets (6000 – 8 000 pairs) and Shy Albatrosses (250 pairs), but we were too far away to see more than the white guano that gives the island its name. The highlight for the party was seeing two Echidnas crossing the road, and watching them bury themselves in seconds on our excited approach.

Photo J. Cooper Boardwalk over the Wedge-tailed Shearwater colony on Rottnest

After Hobart, I made another stop-over on my way home, in Western Australia, to attend the annual meeting of the Conservation Breeding Specialist Group (CBSG) of the World Conservation Union’s Species Survival Commission. This meeting took place on Rottnest Island, a few kilometres off the coast of Fremantle. I presented an invited paper on the ADU’s activities towards developing a Memorandum of Understanding for range states of southern African breeding seabirds. An international workshop to further this is to be held in Cape Town in February next year with CBSG staffers acting as facilitators.

While on Rottnest, I got to know Quokkas, small confiding marsupials that are a near-endemic on the island. At the opening cocktail party I met the environmental manager of the island, and obtained its management plan, which caters for both natural and cultural assets. The similarities with South Africa’s Robben Island were striking, down to similar plants, presence of breeding seabirds, World War II fortifications and guns and old prison buildings. I also managed to fit in one lap of the three-lap Rottnest Marathon between Sunday lectures, to add to the list of islands I have run around (which list also includes Robben, during its annual 15-km race).

Thanks are due to my hosts in Australia: Barry Baker, Gwen and Peter Shaughnessy, Eric Woehler and Ron and Sue Wooller.

John Cooper
22 November 2001

Rottnest Island with a Quokka