Fence me in!
Wetlands on La Trobe’s Melbourne Wildlife Sanctuary.
White's skink.
Melbourne has the highest density of foxes in the world and many are attracted to La Trobe’s campus after dark.
Rangers often see them crossing the road – after feasting on food scraps in the University’s central Agora – on their way for a meal of nature’s gourmet biodiversity in the nearby woodlands and wetlands of the La Trobe Melbourne Wildlife Sanctuary.
Get rid of one fox and another soon takes its place, snuggling into the rich pocket of resources awaiting the urban predator.
‘They’re like the gangs of New York,’ says George Paras, Head Ranger at the Sanctuary. ‘You see an alpha male training up the next generation of cubs on how to best exploit the resources at their paw tips.’ Now, thanks to a new predator-proof fence around the Sanctuary, all that feasting should come to an end, giving the host of small native animals that live in the reserve a chance to discover their niche in life.
One picturesque mound, dotted by tall, sinewy Yellow Gums and covered with a healthy carpet of twigs and branches, is home to White’s Skink Egernia whitii. Until it was protected by the fence, the locally-rare skink, which lays its eggs in rotting logs, never had such a chance to proliferate in peace.
Mr Paras estimates that there are still about a dozen foxes resident in the Sanctuary and that 50 or so outsiders visit on a regular basis to sample lizards, frogs, waterfowl and possums.
When the new 2.2 kilometre fence is finished the foxes will be cleared out, giving zoologists the chance to study how the native fauna respond to their absence.
Mr Paras is predicting an increase in water fowl and quail populations. He says there will be no need to worry about a surplus of small fauna, for flying predators like goshawks, kites and barn owls will move in to take over the top-predator niches vacated by the foxes.
The La Trobe Melbourne Wildlife Sanctuary was one of the first ecosystem restoration projects to be undertaken in Australia. It was established in 1968, a year after the University opened.
It is now home to eastern grey kangaroos, echidnas, skinks, lizards, ringtail and brushtail possums, sugar gliders and eight species of bats. It is a wild place for the wild animals of Melbourne and foxes don’t belong there, says Mr Paras.
Andrew Stocker, the Sanctuary’s Education and Information Coordinator, says the public have donated more than $80,000 towards the 2.7 metre high wire fence.