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!

Comments

  1. Replies
    1. 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

North Queensland Trip, Part 1.

Eungella National Park Eungella National Park location; Image courtesy of Google Maps. My home state of Queensland is a huge place. Bigger than any of the United States, it is considered the sixth largest sub-national entity in the world, behind such remote provinces as Nunavut in Canada, and the Danish territory of Greenland. Though I've lived in and travelled through Europe and Canada, much of my birthplace remains a mystery to me. To rectify this situation, I planned a road-tripping holiday this year with my sister and her partner, in the Northern section of the state. My first visit to anywhere in the Tropics, I have since returned home with some of the most amazing wildlife experiences possible!

Wild Plants of Ipswich

I've never really taken much notice of plants until recently, regarding them usually as just the thing that a bird perches on while you're watching it. This week I decided it was time to change that attitude by trying my hand at plant identification in Denmark Hill Conservation Park, located in the centre of Ipswich. The park is just 11.5 hectares in size, but preserves a patch of bushland that acts as an 'island refuge' in a sea of suburbia. I did my best to focus on the trees and not be too distracted by birds or the resident Koala   (Phascolarctos cinereus)  population, and came up with nine interesting trees and plants seen on the Water Tower Circuit.

Wild Queensland: Photos and stories from my roadtrip north

Earlier this month, I drove up to Airlie Beach in the Whitsunday Region to celebrate the 40th birthday of my close friend, Kat. Photo by Luke Martin. Our time there overlapped for one weekend, in which we enjoyed swims, drinks, hearty dinners and a sailing adventure around the islands. The celebrations and wonderful catch-ups flew by quickly, but when Kat and her husband Luke flew back down south on Sunday, I still had a week's worth of time at my disposal to explore the nature of Queensland's coast. I started with a journey into the forests of Conway National Park, just a ten minute drive east of Airlie Beach. I spent a sunny, humid morning walking up to the peak of Mount Rooper, through vine scrub and eucalypt forest. It was exhilarating!  I immediately saw a new species of bird for me in the carpark there, a female olive-backed sunbird (Cinnyris jugularis). After so much rain earlier in the week, the forest floor was also teeming with amazing fungi! After lunch back in town,