APY Lands

Last week, after looking forward to it for weeks, it was time to head up to the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Lands, or APY Lands, for black-footed rock-wallaby trapping. Black-footed rock-wallabies are known locally by the Anangu people as warru (pronounced with a rolling R which, being Scottish I was rather good at). Unfortunately warru are one of Australia’s most endangered mammals and currently only 2 populations exist in South Australia, both of which exist on the APY Lands (situated in the very north west of South Australia, just south of Uluru).  However, in the late 1990’s, early 2000’s it was noticed that no trace of warru could be found in areas where they were previously found on the APY Lands. The most likely cause is the introduction of feral predators (such as foxes and cats), changes to fire practices and the spread of buffelgrass (an invasive grass that outcompetes the warru’s food source). After a few years monitoring, and an observed extinction of a small population, it was clear that immediate action to protect the species was required, leading to the development of the Warru Recovery Team in 2007. The Warru Recovery Team is a partnership between many bodies, including APY Land Management, the South Australia Government and the local community. One of the main aims of the Warru Recovery Team, is to engage with the locals, a factor I strongly believe in. For me, species conservation can only succeed from collaboration focusing on ground- up strategies that fully engage local people in decision making and action implementation. The rangers for the warru recovery team consist solely of Anangu people.

To assist in the conservation of warru a trial reintroduction of captive warru began in 2011 into a 100 hectare fenced area. This area contains a small hill surrounded by a fence, built by Anangu rangers and is known as the Pintji (Pitjantjatjara for fence). In total 16 warru from Monarto Zoo have been released into the Pintji which were collared, and since then have bred. Therefore to monitor the population, check collars and add new collars an annual trapping is carried out every year, the purpose of my visit.

Describing the 3 days I spent assisting with the Warru team is difficult. I think you can only understand the mysteriousness and beauty, and get an appreciation of the challenges associated with the APY Lands, if you have been there yourself. But hopefully you’ll get an idea and enjoy seeing the photos and hearing what I got up to. The APY Lands are a truly remarkable place. 

A view of the Pintji (the two hills at the front. In this photo you can also see the camp, in the clearing under the hills to the right. 

Our trip began last Sunday, the 18^th of October. After an epic drive of roughly 1000km we hit the left turn signalling the arrival onto the APY Lands. Immediately we were faced with a road that suddenly got rather bumpy and unmaintained. I have never seen a sight like it…driving along the road we faced abandoned car after abandoned car. Some of which were burnt and some we literally had to drive around as they were in the middle of the road.  The reason- it is just too difficult to get it towed, and why not just leave it there to let people come and take your car parts and burn it if they like! 

The main road on the APY Lands, featuring one of many abandoned cars. 

After a nights sleep in Umuwa, the town where APY Land Management is based, it was all hands on deck to get everything organised for the trip, albeit slightly later than planned. Organising the trip that morning brought back memories of the time I spent in Nepal. The Anangu people have a similar mentality to Nepalis in that there isn’t the sense of urgency in their culture. As mid-day approached, and we’d done all we could to help, we rushed to the store in the nearest community (which closes at the rather inconvenient time of 12 noon) to get some lunch. We picnicked underneath the gum tree at the campsite overlooking the pintji and waited…and waited…until 4pm when we saw dust from the rest of the warru trapping team vehicles (2 and a half hours later than planned). In the 3 vehicles that approached were 4 west rangers and their co-ordinator Helen; the 4 east warru rangers with Kate the warru project (and east ranger) co-ordinator; Luke, an IPA (Indigenous Protected Area) Ranger Co-ordinator; Carolina the ecologist, and the minyma (ladies) accompanied by Nulda, a dutch woman who was learning Pitjantjatjara out of interest, so came on the trip to look after the ladies and learn more about the anangu culture. 

I have to say a bit about the minyma as they fascinated me throughout the entire trip. The warru minyma consisted of three over 80 year old ladies who come on every trapping event to see warru (mainly iti warru- baby warru) and overlook our activity on the land. They also have the important but rather difficult task of naming all the new warru, a lot of discussion goes into naming new warru! But I think a huge part of why they come is because they get so well looked after, especially this year as they had Nulda to help look after them.

As soon as the minyma arrived they plonked themselves in the closest shade and ate bananas and chips whilst watching the rest of us erect the camp, including the minyma tents. These ladies are not afraid to tell you if they don’t like something and there was no hesitation to inform us, via shouts of ‘wiya’ (no) from the shade, that they were not happy with their tent. But I don’t want you to get the wrong impression that all the ladies do all day is sit around, and when there is a mention of taking them to go and look for witchetty grubs the minyma spring into action. Witchetty grubs are not easy to come by, they require a lot of digging. But with a lot of digging comes a lot of resting afterwards! Unfortunately I never got to try witchetty grubs, a treat just too good to share, or malu wipu (kangaroo tail) which the Anangu cook by first by burning off all the fur and skin then wrapping it in aluminium foil (obviously a newly devised method) and cooking it for a further hour in the coals. Between you and me I was rather glad I never got offered the latter which has been described to me as greasy, sinewy meat. Not exactly my cup of tea.   

Anyway back to warru trapping…Despite the later than expected arrival at the camp site (lateness, I must say, was a reoccurring theme of the trip) the camp was set up with haste and the three teams were sent off to set their traps. I was assigned to a team with Luke (IPA Ranger Co-Ordinator), Rae (East Ranger) and Noah (West Ranger) and we were given the third trap line, the orange trap line consisting of 9 traps. This trap line was a new line added this season to see whether we could catch any new warru! It was during the first trap set up, at the top of the Pintji hill, when the sun was beginning to set, that I got my first 360 degree view of the landscape, and what a beautiful and mysterious sight it was (as there are lots of culturally significant spots on the land, most of which are kept a secret). I couldn’t help but stop at the top for a brief moment the following evenings too – something the rangers found very amusing! 

Noah (a west ranger who was on my team) baiting one of the traps with peanut butter and oat balls, carrot and apple. (Photo credit: Toby West)

The blue line team (west warru rangers plus Helen, the west warru co-ordinator, and Carolina, the Ecologist). The rangers sure do have a sense of humour...Note Bronson to the left poking Helen with a stick. (Photo credit: Toby West)

Matthew holding up the data sheet and trapping bags as Bronson poses in the background for a photo. (Photo credit: Toby West)

Noah standing on top of the Pintji. (Photo credit: Toby West)

The following morning at 5am everyone was woken up, which for some required a little persuasion from car lights and horns, and headed on mass to the Pintji to check the traps. Bec gave a demonstration on how to extract a warru from their traps, a technique that requires you to reach into the trap and grab the warru by the base of the tail and quickly lift the warru up out of the trap with some speed and head first into a bag (held open by another team member). Believe me speed is key in this process (as well as a firm grip on the base of the warru’s tail), as you want the warru in the bag before the warru has a chance to realise what is happening to it and cling onto the inside of the trap with its claws or start thrashing about.

Now the demonstration made this process look easy. However, on my first shot of getting a warru out of its trap I had to deal with a 6.4kg male (double the size of most of the caught warru). Unprepared for such a heavy load I had to make two attempts to haul it out of the trap and into the bag! Oh well, you learn the hard way as some may say and it did give the rangers something to laugh at. 

Extracting a warru from the trap by grabbing the base of the tail and quickly pulling it up out of the trap into a bag. 

Walking between trap sites often required clambering over rocks. (Photo credit: Toby West)

In total that morning we caught 22 out of 28 traps set, which meant I got a lot of experience assisting with processing and teaching the Anangu rangers how to process too. A lot of the rangers have low literacy levels so this was a great opportunity for me and I think they enjoyed getting involved. 

Bec teaching Bronson how to process warru. When processing the animal is kept in the bag as much as possible( especially the head to prevent the animal getting stressed) In the photo Bec is checking the collar of a warru. (Photo credit: Toby West)

Nathan (East warru ranger) releasing the warru into the cave where he was caught, after being processing. (Photo credit: Toby West)

Me releasing a collared warru! (Photo credit: Toby West)

What I was really hoping for was to see some warru with pouched young,  known as iti warru (baby warru) by the minyma and I was not disappointed. I think during the entire trip I saw a range of iti warru from little pink jellybeans in the pouch to a fully furred young, which was so large I’m surprised it hadn’t already been turfed out to fend for itself. Unfortunately marsupials (animals with a pouch) have the tendency to chuck their young out of their pouch in stressful situations, and often do when being released after processing. To ensure the young remain in the pouch the pouch is either stapled when the iti warru is 30 to 40mm, any larger and it is sutured (sewing the top of the pouch leaving only a small hole), when the pouched young is rather large. Don’t worry there aren’t many nerves at the edge of the pouch so it hardly hurts the animal. For the big fully furred young (which the minyma named Tiintu meaning sun) it would have been an impossible task to get her back into the pouch so he was put into the cloth bag, along with his mother, which was loosely tied and left in the cave were we found him. With this technique the hope is that the mother will let the young into the pouch when she’s nice and calm and hop out the bag. Unfortunately the next morning when we went to check the bag the iti warru was still in the bag without the mother. As he was still warm it was likely the mother had left the bag when she heard us, so in this situation, we placed the little guy into the back of the cave and fortunately he hoped off. Even if he didn’t find his mother Bec was confident that he’d be able to survive. Then in a beautiful twist of fate, the blue team caught the mother in the next door trap so we released into the cave only 5 minutes after her daughter!

The adorable Iti warru (which was the large fully furred young). 

Bec teaching everyone how to suture the pouch of a female warru carrying a large warru. (Photo credit: Toby West)

Over the three days of trapping, processing the warru in the morning ran smoother, however I can’t say the same for trap setting. On the last night of trap setting (the Wednesday night) the east warru rangers firstly arrived very late for trapping, then, in a drama that I didn’t get involved in, ended up going home. This left us to set two trap lines, but did give me the opportunity to help set the pink trap line which involved lots of clambering over rocks and into caves almost in the dark, which was a lot of fun. Despite having our work cut out the next morning due to the reduced number of helpers, we coped fine and even managed to take the minyma out to check a couple of the easy to reach traps. They were delighted when they saw that the warru we’d caught was Piiny- Piiny (meaning moth in Pitjantjatjara), who we hadn’t yet caught the previous 2 trapping nights.

My favorite photo from the trip. Helen is giving Molly (one of the minyma) the bag containing one of the pouched young, which she put down her cardigan to keep it warm whilst the mother was being processed. As you can see in the photo Molly was chuffed!

In total, this Pintji trapping session we managed to catch 35 wallabies: 26 re-traps and 11 new (2 of them fully furred pouched young), one which the minyma named Tjakura (Great Desert Skink), a great name if you ask me. We also caught the 5 that were added in April 2015 (Piiny- Piiny being one) and all are good! So currently on the Pintji the population is roughly about 50 individuals, indicating that the population is doing really well yet raising another concern that maybe the warru density on the Pintji is becoming rather high. The Warru Recovery Team are in talks to do some re-introductions of Pintji warru in suitable habitat on the APY Lands which is exciting! It would be a great achievement to have warru thriving once more on the APY Lands in the future. 

 Asides from warru, one animal that I was looking out for on the APY lands was thorny devils (Moloch horridus) (one of the animals I’d talked about in week 7 of Arid Recovery that we made at market day with the children). Thorny devils are very unique looking lizards covered in thorns (which help catch water and direct droplets towards their mouth) and have a stunning pattern that looks like it’s been painted on. I did manage to see a live thorny devil, for all of 2 seconds, before Bec ran over it. As we turned a corner on the dirt road the thorny devil was in the wheel rut on the passenger (my) side so, despite my shriek, there was no hope of stopping in time. But after recovering from the ordeal, I was still glad to see a thorny devil up close, even if it was dead! I shouldn't really complain though, I did get to see a beautiful netted dragon (Ctenophorus nuchalis). 

Central netted dragon (Ctenophorus nuchalis) named so because of the black patterning on the dorsal surface.
(Photo credit: Toby West)

Despite the trip only lasting 3 days it has taught me a new level of patience and on the APY Lands expect the unexpected, and no matter how much you prepare always be prepared for it not going to plan! But in saying that I had an unforgettable and enjoyable experience. It is a true privilege to get to visit the APY Lands, not many people get the opportunity to go, but the few people I had spoken to before the trip had told me how breath-taking the lands are. And now, after visiting the APY Lands I also can say the same.

 

The Pintji Warru Trapping Team (with the addition of warru dummies, used to train the rangers how to process the animals).