Between a rock and a hard place : site selection for Brush-tailed Rock-wallaby (Petrogale penicillata) translocations using an explicit decision-making process

Translocation programs are used in species conservation, but their success rates, particularly in Australia, are low. The poor outcomes for translocation programs are commonly attributed to a lack of information about habitat requirements, especially for rare and endangered species. To address this, the identification of suitable release sites using analytical methods such as Habitat Suitability Models (HSM), has become common. Since biodiversity losses are predicted to increase in the future, effective strategies to reduce species decline are required. Evidence-based decisions and scientific data to support conservation decision-making is paramount in conservation efforts. Once widely distributed across the mountainous country of south-eastern Australia, the distribution of the Brush-tailed Rock-wallaby (BTRW) has contracted particularly within the southern extent of their range. Considered critically endangered in Victoria and extinct in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT), it is more important than ever that the habitat requirements of the BTRW are understood to inform future translocations and the protection of this species in the wild. In this study, an explicit decision-making process was combined with Habitat Suitability Modelling (HSM) and ground-truthing methods to inform potential Brush-tailed Rock-wallaby (BTRW) translocations sites within Victoria and the ACT. Although this study is not the first of its kind to use HSM to predict BTRW habitat suitability, it is the first of its kind to apply an explicit decision-making process at two key stages: 1. to inform the selection of key physical and management attributes to be used in a HSM; and 2. to prioritise sites, within experts’ local knowledge areas, for ground-truthing By combining HSM and an explicit decision-making process, this study has been able to identify six suitable and two highly suitable habitat for BTRW across Victoria and the ACT. The use of an explicit decision-making process and ground-truthing methods to validate the model outputs and prioritise sites for ground-truthing has ensured that the final ranking of potential candidate sites can be reliably used by the Southern Brush-tailed Rock-wallaby Recovery Team to inform future translocations.Masters by Researc