The wallaby controversy

Feral wallaby populations are growing on the Isle of Man - and native wildlife is suffering

- James Fair

IT'S 9PM IN LATE APRIL IN AN AREA OF the Isle of Man known as the Ballaugh Curragh, and a most unusual nocturnal migration is taking place. As darkness descends on a 2km² area of wet woodland, an estimated 600 red-necked wallabies are emerging to feed on the surrounding grasslands.

You'd think that 600 wallabies would be easy to spot as they awake from their daytime slumbers, especially since the island has no large native land mammals to confuse them with. But as the Manx Wildlife Trust's head of conservation David Bellamy points out, they blend in well with the tangled, swampy forest of grey willows.

"The fact that four of us, who are looking for wallabies, just walked past one without seeing it and it's only 15m away highlights how easy it is to be here and not realise you are surrounded by them," he says. (It's only spotted with a thermal-imaging camera.)

It surely goes without saying that the wallabies should not be on the Isle of Man, and especially not in the Ballaugh Curragh, the island's only Ramsar site and area of special scientific interest. The macropods are native to mainland Australia and Tasmania, but they were brought to the government-owned wildlife zoo in 1965. Shortly afterwards, it seems, a few wallabies escaped (no one knows how many but it was probably fewer than 10), and they've been living as a feral population ever since. Until a couple of years ago, it was assumed the total population was fewer than 100 animals. But in 2023 and 2024, two surveys using drones enabled with thermal-imaging cameras blew this assumption far out into the windy Irish Sea.