Backyard Bandicoots

Do you have bandicoots in your backyard?

By Janine Kuehs and Amanda Kristancic. Do you live in a part of Perth with local bushland nearby? Are there quenda present? Do you see their little conical digs on your walks and hear them rustle quickly into the bushes in the evenings? Do you see evidence of their foraging in your backyard? Or hear…

World Wildlife Day 2022: highlighting our important ecosystem engineers

By Natasha Tay. On 3rd March 1973 at the meeting of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), representatives of 80 countries agreed to protect animals and plants from being excessively and unsustainably traded and exploited. The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) was thus created…

Spiny, striped, pygmy and giant bandicoots of New Guinea

By Natalie Warburton. Quenda are quirky inhabitants of many gardens and parks in the Perth metropolitan region. But did you know that they are only one of more than twenty species of bandicoots that are found around Australia and New Guinea? Unlike our local species, little is known of the diets and behaviour of their…

Australian diggers – strong-arm excavators and aerators of Australian landscapes

By Meg Martin. Digging marsupials play an especially important ecological role in Australian ecosystems by helping with soil turnover, nutrient mixing, seed dispersal and increasing breakdown of organic materials. Many of these species are highly specialised diggers – with strong forlimbs and long claws. Historically, the interactions between bones and muscle during behaviour has been…

Results are in! Highlights from backyard bandicoot spy-cams

By Emily Webster and Janine Kuehs. Many lucky residents of Mandurah and surrounds will have seen or heard about the bandicoot also known as quenda. You might even be proud to share your backyard with a quenda or two. But quenda areimpacted by expanding urban development fragmenting their habitat, and the presence of introduced predators…

Bandicoots in the ‘burbs? St Emilie’s in Canning Vale get a science lesson from Murdoch Researchers

By Janine Kuehs and Natasha Tay. The Backyard Bandicooteers attended something a little different last week! St Emilie’s Primary School science teacher Kerrie Cogger contacted Murdoch University after they discovered little diggings in their school’s bushland. Mrs Cogger, along with her students (who together undertake many activities in the bushland), set up a motion activated…

Backyard Bandicoots in Mandurah

By Melvyn Tuckey; Greenfields resident, committee member of Peel Preservation Group Inc. and avid nature lover. Early in 2017, Melvyn noticed a new creature visiting his backyard, and so begins the “Story of Bandi”… It was around midnight sometime in late January that I first sighted an unusual creature in my backyard. On this particular…

By Trish Fleming and Amanda Kristancic. They come in the middle of the night to raid our gardens of fungi, bulbs, and grubs – leaving in their wake characteristic small conical diggings across lawns and flower beds. Sharing our cities with southern brown bandicoots (quenda) is something that Perth and Mandurah residents have come to…

Habitat islands in a sea of urbanisation – Identifying reserves used by quenda

By Gill Bryant. Quenda are fantastic urban adapters, persisting in and around cities and towns across southwest Western Australia (WA). Quenda play an important role as ecosystem engineers by modifying their environment well out of proportion to their body size, where a single quenda can excavate 3.9 tonnes of soil each year digging for their…