OUR WORK
Australia is a world leader in species extinction and declines, largely due to invasive species.
Our Work | Ending extinction | Photo by Lindy Lumsden
Extinct: Central hare-wallaby, kuluwarri
- Common name: Central hare-wallaby, kuluwarri
- Scientific name: Lagorchestes asomatus
- Formal national status: Extinct
- Decade of extinction: 1960s
- Expert assessment of extinction causes: Invasive species (Fox 45%, cat 42%)
Of the central hare-wallaby nothing more tangible survives than one skull from an animal killed in the Great Sandy Desert in 1932. The skull was submitted by Michael Terry, a geologist-explorer who provided no information about it other than a vague locality (somewhere between Mount Farewell and Lake Mackay in the Northern Territory). The animal was probably caught by one of Terry’s Aboriginal assistants and eaten for dinner.
Aboriginal elders, consulted in the 1980s about their lost animals, remembered this one as plentiful and widespread, knowing it as ‘kalanpa’, ‘tjuntatarrka’ and by many other names. It lived on sandplains and dunes with spinifex, and could be caught at its daytime shelters in vegetation if approached with enough stealth.
It was remembered from more than 40 locations in the deserts of the Northern Territory, Western Australia and northern South Australia. The last to see it were Pintupi people in the Gibson Desert of Western Australia, who recalled it at Kiwirrkurra and Warla Warla in 1960. Kiwirrkurra has been described as the most remote community in Australia.
The extinction of the central hare-wallaby is blamed mainly on foxes and cats. Larger fires, after Indigenous people left the deserts, probably contributed to its demise by removing food plants and also shelter that hid hare-wallabies from predators – especially foxes and cats.
Michael Terry was not a serious naturalist, but his remote travels enabled him to ‘discover’ a second species of mammal near Lake Mackay that no other white person ever saw – the desert bettong. Terry brought back its skull from another expedition the following year. A jaw of this species was subsequently found in a cave on Nullarbor Plain, 1,200 kilometres away, but no other remains have survived. Its extinction is also blamed on cats and foxes.
The only physical clue to the central hare-wallaby is this skull found in the Northern Territory, but we know from Aboriginal testimony that the species also occurred in Western Australia, including in the Kiwirrkurra Indigenous Protected Area, shown at top of screen. Photo: © Robert Whyte.
Of the central hare-wallaby nothing more tangible survives than one skull.
Extinct
Australia has lost about 100 native plants and animals to extinction since colonisation, most of which were mainly due to invasive species. An estimated 27 of those extinctions occurred since the 1960s.
Learn more about some of Australia’s lost animals: