Yellow‐footed rock‐wallaby in Queensland 127
examination ofMay 2023 imagery provided on the Sentinel-2 browser (Sinergise Solutions, 2023).We determined whether there was a wild dog and macropod exclusion fence within 1.5 km of a site and whether a fence bisected mountain range habitat through examination of an exclusion fence GIS layer compiled by the Queensland Department of Agriculture and Fisheries (C. Wilson, unpubl. data, 2023), with unmapped exclusion fences observed in the field added. We used χ2 and Fisher’s exact tests to determine whether
a significant association existed between P. xanthopus celeris presence and abundance and any of the following factors: habitat score and characteristics, presence and abundance of other herbivores, clearing in valleys and the presence of exclusion fences. We also explored the influence of distance to water on yellow-footed rock-wallaby, common wallaroo and goat presence using Mann–WhitneyUtests.Wefurther explored the influence of the six individual habitat variables (cliffs, gorges, fissures/passages, rocky terraces, caves/over- hangs and boulders) on rock-wallaby presence and abun- dance using decision trees. We performed all analyses using R 4.2.2 (R Core Team, 2022). We used survey data to reassess the conservation status
of P. xanthopus celeris with the IUCN Red List criteria (IUCN, 2022). We calculated extent of occurrence (EOO; minimum convex polygon) and area of occupancy (AOO; using a 2 × 2 km grid cell method) with GeoCat (IUCN, 2022), using only records from 2010 onwards. We followed Woinarski et al. (2014) in defining generation length of the subspecies as 5–6 years.
Results Distribution, abundance and habitat preferences
During 2010–2023 we surveyed 138 sites within the range of P. xanthopus celeris (116 in 2010–2015 and 81 in 2020–2023, including 59 sites that we visited in both periods). Where we recorded survey time, we spent a mean of 68 min at each site in the 2010s surveys and 45 minat eachinthe 2020ssurveys (range 10–240 min). We detected yellow- footed rock-wallabies at least once at 115 of the 138 sites surveyed during 2010–2023 (Fig. 1), resulting in an EOO of 42,244 km2 and an AOO of 432 km2. During 197 site visits we observed the subspecies on 93 occasions (48%), with a total of at least 308 individuals sighted. For siteswith evidence of rock-wallaby presence we observed a mean of 1.8 indivi- duals per site (range 0–17). Forty per cent of sightings were of a single animal and 70% were of #3. We observed 10 or more individuals on six site visits. Yellow-footed rock- wallabies were abundant on 24 site visits, common on 88 site visits, uncommon on 54 site visits and absent on 31 site visits. We recorded dung pellets at low density (maximum 1–5/m2)on 64 site visits, at densities of 6–10/m2 on 47 site vis- its and at densities of .10/m2 on 49 site visits. Dung extent
ranged from a few metres to occurring continuously across distances of .2 km. Habitat complexity was strongly associated with yellow-
footed rock-wallaby presence (Fisher’sexact test,P = 0.0003). At sites with high habitat scores, P. xanthopus celeris was common or abundant at 80% of sites with a habitat score of 5,at 77% of sites with a habitat score of 4 and at 47%of sites with a habitat score of 3. However, the subspecies was never common at sites with a habitat score of 0, and it was only common at two sites with a habitat score of 1 (Table 2). The subspecies was absent from only two sites with a habitat score of 5, both visited in 2013 and located in the north-east of the range of the subspecies where it had become locally extinct. We selected one of these high-quality sites for a successful re-introduction, which occurred in 2020 as part of a separate project. The results of χ2 and Fisher’s exact tests showed that five individual components of habitat score had a significant association with P. xanthopus celeris maximum abundance: rocky terraces (χ2(3)= 25.43,P,0.001), passages (χ2(3)= 40.46,P,0.001), caves (χ2(3)= 15.57, P,0.01), cliffs (Fisher’s exact test, P = 0.0058) and boulders (Fisher’s exact test, P = 0.014 ). Gorges did not have a signifi- cant association with abundance. Three habitat components had a significant association with P. xanthopus celeris pres- ence: passages (χ2(1)= 19.18,P,0.001), boulders (Fisher’s exact test, P = 0.0094) and cliffs (Fisher’s exact test, P= 0.040). Decision tree analysis supported this, with passages and terraced boulder fields (Plate 1) being the most informative variables predicting P. xanthopus celeris presence. There was no significant difference between the mean ef-
fective distance to water for sites where P. xanthopus celeris was present and absent during the survey periods in the 2010s and 2020s(Fig. 2) at either the local (100 m) or the regional (10 km) scales, and we recorded the subspecies up to an effective distance of 6.2 km from permanent
TABLE 2 Relationship of Petrogale xanthopus celeris abundance to habitat score, showing the number of sites in each category during the 2010–2015 and 2020–2023 surveys. Where sites were surveyed in both survey periods, the latest (2020–2023) habitat score and abundance are shown. Habitat characteristics were not recorded at three sites, so the total number of sites presented is 135. See text for definitions of abundance and habitat score (higher habitat scores indicate a greater number of physical features suitable for the subspecies).
Abundance rating Absent
Uncommon Common Abundant Total
Habitat score 0
1 5
1 2345 3 10
1
1 0 11 0 2
8 10
2 3
4 16 29 15
0 0004 10 2718344430
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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