Skip to main content

Captain Bogart: Road Warrior


Wild BNE fan Jonathan Pickvance is an urban wildlife ecologist with over six years of experience working with wildlife in South-east Queensland. Here he shares one of his most memorable encounters.
"A few years ago I was working on a large-scale koala movement study which aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of retrofitted structures as a means for the safe movement of koalas across roads.  My research group tracked 61 koalas throughout South East Queensland and I was required to track each koala on a weekly basis.  From this, I witnessed first hand the hardship of South-east Queensland koalas in the suburbs dealing with cars, dogs and disease.
Image supplied by Jonathan Pickvance.
Most of the koalas we tracked had a home range which overlapped at least one road and would frequently be found in the back yards of dog owners.  Although only one tracked koala was hit by a car (and survived after being treated at a wildlife hospital), 30 of the 61 tracked koalas were lost to disease or dog attack.
The koala that was hit by the car was 'Captain Bogart,' a two year old male in Kallangur, north of Brisbane, whom after his recovery made an incredible journey against the odds, moving over a kilometre in search of new territory and females.  As shown in the map, he crossed the Bruce Highway on-ramp,  then crossed Anzac Avenue where he moved through Kingfisher Park, before crossing the 6 lanes of the Bruce Highway to be found unharmed in a small patch of bushland near housing estates.  My research team lost his VHF signal for some time before venturing into the suburbs behind North Lakes Shopping Centre.  He absolutely blew our minds! Although I was never able to get a good photo of the Captain, my best photo is of 'Dirty Harry,'  a blue-eyed boy who occupied bushland across the road from North Pine Country Markets in Petrie."
'Dirty Harry'; photo by Jonathan Pickvance.

 If you'd like to share your South-east Queensland nature experiences with an audience of like-minded people, email Christian at wildbne@gmail.com for more info!

Labels

Labels:

Comments

  1. Greg Roberts29 December 2015 at 07:39

    Nice one Christian!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Christian Perrin29 December 2015 at 19:17

      Thanks Greg, when I heard this tale from Jonathan, it was too good not to share!

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Tadpoles of South-eastern Australia: A Guide With Keys

Book review Reed New Holland Publishing, 2002. It’s noon on a warm autumn day and I am driving south along Beaudesert Road towards the peripheral suburbs of Brisbane’s southside that remain largely a mystery to me. I have decided that not knowing the amphibian fauna inhabiting the suburb of Algester is a personal error that I simply must rectify. My favourite way to search for frogs is to go spotlighting on humid spring and summer nights, but I have left it a little late this year and doubt my chances at finding them now that the evenings have mercifully turned cooler. Instead, I am going to survey the local amphibian population in a way that is quite new to me, aided by a secret weapon sitting in the passenger seat next to me: Marion Anstis’s book, Tadpoles of South-eastern Australia: A Guide With Keys .
4 comments
Read more

Creek Fishing in the Redlands

Hilliards Creek Situated to the south-east of Brisbane, the Redlands shire encompasses many areas of natural beauty, including the Cleveland foreshore and North Stradbroke Island. It is also one of the fastest growing suburban areas in Australia, and would be unrecognisable to those who knew it as a rural outpost just 25 years ago. Despite this surge in development, even the busy suburbs of Wellington Point, Ormiston and Cleveland retain areas of natural bushland set aside to preserve populations of Koalas (Phascolarctos cinereus) and Squirrel Gliders (Petaurus norfolcensis), from which other forms of wildlife benefit also. On my visit there today, I was interested in looking at how these other creatures are faring, particularly the fish living in Hilliards Creek.
19 comments
Read more

Wild Plants of Moreton Bay

This month marks the one year anniversary of when I headed out into the bush for the first time to study not animals, but plants . It was a decision that changed my life, and I've since come to enjoy going on tree ID quests as much as I enjoy a bout of birdwatching, snorkeling or spotlighting.  Last Saturday, I decided to celebrate this momentous occasion with a dawn stroll around King Island Conservation Park, off the coast of Wellington Point.
14 comments
Read more