Welcoming wallabies to Wirruwana: Restoring Dirk Hartog Island to its pre-European state

摘要

Dirk Hartog, Western Australia's largest island, lies at the very western-most boundary of the Australian continent. For thousands of years, the island has been well-known to the local Malgana people, who call it Wirruwana. And it was here that in 1616 the island's Dutch namesake landed and left an inscribed pewter plate, marking the first record of European visitation to Western Australia.The island Dirk Hartog and his crew encountered in 1616, where a number of native mammals roamed free, would have been quite different to that of today. During the intervening centuries, the island has had a varied history, culminating in a range of legacies - in the 1860s it became a pastoral lease where sheep were grazed; in the early 1900s it was a home to lighthouse keepers who introduced goats as a source of food; and it later became an environment where feral cats roamed as the top terrestrial predator. Consequently, Dirk Hartog Island slowly had its populations of vertebrate fauna eroded, with at least 10 mammal species and one bird succumbing to local extinction on the island. By the time the island was gazetted as a national park, just three small mammals remained (two rodents and a dunnart) and the island's vegetation was severely degraded.