Yellow‐footed rock‐wallaby in Queensland 125


FIG.1 Petrogale xanthopus celeris distribution, central-western Queensland, Australia, 2010–2023. The map shows major towns, rivers, ranges, national parks (NPs; hatched), the dingo barrier fence (dashed line) and more recent (post-2010) wild dog and macropod exclusion fences (grey lines), and sites where rock-wallabies were abundant, common, uncommon or absent during the 2010–2015 and 2020–2023 surveys. Where presence or abundance differed between survey periods, the more recent score is used.


extensively cleared and sown with introduced buffel grass Cenchrus ciliaris.Most of the study area is under commercial livestock grazing leases, although sheep and cattle are mostly restricted to valleys and lower slopes of the ranges. Four na- tional parks occur within the study area (Fig. 1). Feral goats are common in some areas, and there are high numbers of common wallaroos and localized occurrences of feral horses Equus caballus throughout the area. Eastern grey kangaroos Macropus giganteus and red kangaroos Osphranter rufus are mostly restricted to the lower slopes and valleys. Dingoes Canis familiaris, cats and foxes occur throughout the study area, although little is known of their densities. Fires are rare because of naturally sparse groundcover, although some mulga Acacia aneura and shrubby tablelands may burn be- cause of accumulation of vegetation biomass (mostly grasses) after exceptionally wet seasons.


Methods Survey timing and participants


The present study involved two separate survey periods: May 2010–June 2015 (although mostly 2010–2013), and September 2020–June 2023 (Table 1). Details of the main participants in these surveys are provided in the Author contributions section, with others who assisted on single field trips named in the Acknowledgements section.


Site relocation, additional site selection and survey methodology


We relocated sites previously surveyed opportunistically during the 1970s (Gordon et al., 1978) or by targeted searches


undertaken during 1983–1987 (Gordon et al., 1993) as accur- ately as possible using original site maps and notes and inspection of satellite imagery via Google Earth (Google, USA). We also surveyed locations of all other historical re- cords. We located additional sites using Google Earth to de- tect deep gorges and dense vegetation.Wesurveyed another 35 sites for P. xanthopus celeris outside its known distribu- tion (Fig. 1). Sites varied in size (0.5–2.0 ha) and were de- fined by habitat characteristics favoured by yellow-footed rock-wallabies, typically a gorge, boulder field or escarp- ment. Some sites encompassed multiple habitat elements. We placed sites at least 1.5 km apart (Sharp, 2009, showed that individuals typically have a home range of ,1 km2 but can travel up to 1.5 km to drink) or separated by .1 km of unsuitable (non-range) habitat or an exclusion fence (Smith & Allen, 2021) that would be impenetrable to P. xanthopus celeris.We only recorded time of site visit and total survey effort (person-minutes) in the 2020–2023 sur- veys; we calculated these data through GPS waypoint and photo times where possible for the 2010–2015 surveys, but these data are unknown for the 1970s–1980s surveys. We based the data recorded at each site on the


1970s–1980s surveys (Gordon et al., 1993) and included land- scape features (presence or absence of the following: cliffs or gorges, fissures/passages in the rock face, rocky terraces, caves and boulders, and, where present, the estimated max- imum height of cliffs and boulders); vegetation composition and structure on tablelands and slopes; total number of P. xanthopus celeris individuals sighted during survey site visits (we provide this as aminimum; if we suspected an in- dividual could have been seen more than once, we did not recount it); maximum density of rock-wallaby dung per


Oryx, 2025, 59(1), 123–135 © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Fauna & Flora International doi:10.1017/S0030605324000760


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