• WU Team
  • 17 July, 2026
  • 3:58 pm
  • 0 comments

Gotta catch ‘em all – pursuing precious pouched Pokémon

It’s been a jam-packed field season for Wildlife Unlimited field ecologists monitoring Victoria’s most powerful Pokémon – the brush-tailed rock-wallaby (BTRW)! The BTRW’s special power has to be the species’ effortless bounding over steep rocky habitat.

This makes our task of counting individuals and sampling genetics from the BTRW a lot more difficult – it pays to think like a rock-wallaby! Luckily BTRW have a weakness for lucerne hay and don’t mind a cosy hideaway at this time of year.

Photo1: Carrying Rock-wallaby traps in and out of the gorge (Image: W. Bourke). Photo 2: Rach checks a remote camera for monitoring the Rock-wallabies (Image: E. Cordy)

Our camera array detected 54 individual BTRW, and we managed to capture 31 of them during our trapping program. After a quick health check, a tissue sample was collected for genetic analysis, and new animals were given an ear-tag to aid our population estimate.


Many of the trapped BTRW were new youngsters finding their independence – the most important action we can do to protect these animals is ongoing fox and cat control.

Photo 1: Willow holding a BTRW while having a quick health check (Image: E. Cordy). Photo 2: BTRW feet perfectly adapted to scaling cliffs (Image: R. Gaborov). Photo 3: Rach and Rena measure a captured BTRW (Image: J. Durrant)

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This work is funded by the Australian Government and completed in partnership with DEECA and Parks Victoria under approved permits.