Meet The Bilby Brothers

Frank Manthey

Hi ! it's great to see you here at feralbilby.com As you know, the bilby is in serious trouble. It’s hard to believe there are only around 600 of these Australian marsupials left in the wild. Time is running out!

Watch a brief video of Frank Mathey ...

Peter MacRea

Peter McRae is a member of the Bilby National Recovery Team and has been working with Bilbies in Queensland's remote south-west since 1988. He is responsible for a captive breeding program at Charleville, about 750km west of Brisbane. '

Peter and Frank Manthey are the men behind the Save the Bilby Fund, which raised the money to build a 20km predator proof fence in Currawinya National Park. When the fence was completed, the predators (cats and foxes) were removed from the 25km2 enclosure. Bilbies were due to be reintroduced at Easter 2003, but the drought has delayed this. One of Australia's best-known bilby experts is Peter McRae; a senior zoologist with the National Parks and Wildlife Service based in Charleville, 740 kilometres west of Brisbane. For the last twelve years, Mr. McRae has worked exclusively on bilbies and with his long bushy beard, he is often referred to as "The Bilby Man".

Centre Image Courtesy Qld Parks and Wildlife

Mr. McRae is passionate about their survival and says when he first began research into the bilby in the 80's, there was little information available. In fact, there had been no scientifically based sighting of bilbies in Queensland since 1961. In 1988, Mr. McRae was one of the first to rediscover the bilby between Birdsville and Bedourie, a treeless landscape in Far Western Queensland, after years of searching, which included thousands of hours spot lighting. Mr. McRae describes how it happened, "it was a light misty, rainy night about four o'clock in the morning when we first spotted one, it was incredibly exciting". Mr. McRae spends months at a time in this isolated region researching.

He has fitted some of the colony with radio collars to keep track of the dwindling population. Mr. McRae has also established a successful breeding program at Charleville with 30 bilbies in captivity. He says when they are newly born "they look like a baked bean with legs". The bilby is a marsupial and the female pouch contains eight nipples. However, only one or two young are usually produced at a time. To keep the captive population as genetically vital as possible, strict control and records are kept of breeding pairs as well as attempts to introduce bilbies from different colonies.

The Queensland bilbies are genetically different from WA and NT and Mr. McRae believes the gene pool is large enough "for a full recovery. That is our goal". Currently, Mr. McRae is part of a campaign to raise $300,000 to build a 25 square kilometre fenced off enclosure near Hungerford, on the border of Queensland and N.S.W. The idea is to release the captive bred bilbies inside the enclosure to protect them from its predators. Once the population is large enough they will be released into the surrounding Currawinya National Park.

The two metre high electric fence has been especially designed with a floppy top so if feral cats make it past the electric fence (cat fur is a good insulator), the top of the fence will push them back. So far $150 000 has been raised. Individuals are encouraged to buy a section of fence worth $20 for which they will receive a certificate and their name will be included on a plaque. Mr. McRae points out there are numerous species in danger of extinction in Outback Australia, for example, only 80 northern hairy nose wombats are left. What makes the decline of the bilby such a concern is they are a "generalists" and don't have special needs for food and habitat.

Mr. McRae says bilbies have a lot going for them in terms of ability to breed quickly, surviving incredibly harsh desert conditions, do not require drinking water and can eat just about anything. "They should be flourishing. The fact they are not says a lot about the state of the environment".

Image Courtesy Qld Parks and Wildlife

The Bilbies’ Lament - A poem by Frank Manthey

I was born in a sunburnt country,
in a time of long ago.
Before rabbits, cats and foxes,
I was free to come and go.
So come on all you Aussies,
It makes darn good common sense,
to help these guys that are trying to build our saviour fence.
Aussies stick together,
in fire, floods and drought,
support this fund to help us,
our time is running out.