Status
Habitat
Range
Group
Common on two islands, nearly gone from the mainland it once filled.
Rottnest Island and Bald Island hold dense, visible populations because neither has foxes or established cats. On the Western Australian mainland the same animal persists in scattered remnants of dense swamp thicket, in numbers that have fallen sharply and continue to fall. The island populations are not evidence of a healthy species; they are refuges.
Mainland quokkas depend on thick low cover for shelter from predators, and that cover is produced and destroyed by fire. Too frequent a burn removes the thicket entirely, and the animals do not return for years. Predator control, fire mosaics and genetic management of the isolated island stock are all running at once.
The open shelf
More frames of the quokka
Streamed live from the Commons Quality Images archive, eighteen at a time. Tap any frame to study it — each remains its photographer’s.
0 shown
Developing the next eighteen…
