ORC will eradicate any ‘satellite’ wallaby numbers

A "satellite" population of wallabies living in the hills above Dunedin will be destroyed if found, authorities say.

The Otago Regional Council and the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) this week said surveillance indicated up to four of the pest animals could now be living in the Flagstaff and Swampy Summit areas.

For both organisations the "immediate goal remains to eradicate satellite wallaby populations such as these", they said in response to questions from the Otago Daily Times.

Regional council environmental implementation manager Libby Caldwell said surveillance work to determine the precise location of wallabies was ongoing and "control" would follow.

"Surveillance indicates that there are between two and four animals on the Flagstaff and Swampy Summit areas," Mrs Caldwell said.

Council wallaby surveillance had found signs of wallabies at several sites in the Flagstaff-Swampy Summit and Silverstream Valley areas.

Further, there had been four public sightings since the start of 2021, she said.

Members of the public had reported wallabies at both the Spiers Rd track and the Pineapple Track, at Flagstaff.

There was a report in nearby Three Mile Hill Rd, last May, and most recently one was seen in Silverstream Valley Rd, in October.

Dogs and thermal cameras were used by council contractors to follow up the public reports, but no wallabies or further indications of the pests had been found, Mrs Caldwell said.

She described the council’s present surveillance as "extensive".

Several years ago, after an adult wallaby was filmed by a member of the public along the side of Whare Flat Rd near the bottom of Three Mile Hill, in 2018, the council said it would launch a "full investigation".

The council’s then-environmental monitoring and operations manager Scott MacLean said if the pests were to establish in the hills around Dunedin they would be very difficult to remove and could cause significant damage to the surrounding agriculture and biodiversity.

At the time the council said there had only been four wallaby sightings in the area since 2011.

The introduced marsupials live in large numbers in a so-called "containment area" in South Canterbury, where populations were established for recreational hunting in the 1870s.

However, outside of this area, including south of the Waitaki River, the Bennett’s wallaby is treated as a pest because they disrupt ecosystems and cause significant production losses for rural industries.

The animal’s range has been predicted to expand south into Wanaka and north of Alexandra and Dunedin by 2065.

Despite rumours the Dunedin satellite population was established after animals were freed in the area, Mrs Caldwell said there was no evidence to confirm whether this was the case.

An MPI spokesman said follow-up surveillance and control measures that follow a wallaby sighting were undertaken by the council.

hamish.maclean@odt.co.nz