While trawling through camera trap images this week as a welcome break during inductions for my new role as Eurardy Reserve Manager, Bush Heritage ecologist Ben Parkhurst and I made an exciting discovery: the distinct white spots of a Western Quoll caught on one of Eurardy’s monitoring cameras.
This particular camera is located on Eurardy’s eastern boundary, which means the quoll had likely travelled at least 27km from the translocated population in the gorges of Kalbarri National Park, passing through Eurardy, and survived crossing the Great Northern Highway.
Young male Chuditch are known to clock up significant kilometres as they disperse to find their own territories, usually around November. As this photograph was recorded in December, our thinking is that this individual was a young male doing just this.
Although it’s unlikely there’s a self-sustaining population of Western Quolls on Eurardy currently, it’s not impossible in the future. Chuditch thrive in habitat that's complex, with ample hollowed logs, rocky crevices, and burrows allowing them to hide from introduced predators like feral cats and foxes.