We’re going on a wallaby hunt

Auckland Council has spent $12,700 trying to find a suspected Aussie interloper at a North Shore park.

Skippy, where the bloody hell are ya?

Not at Auckland’s Long Bay Regional Park, apparently.

A suspected wallaby has kept Auckland Council busy since a park volunteer claimed to have spotted it in April.

But trail cameras and a wallaby detector dog named Lotte have been unsuccessful in detecting a wallaby, while scat samples collected for analysis ended up belonging to a possum.

As night fell over the North Shore park on Wednesday, a team of forest survey specialists took to the sky with a thermal and night vision drone, in a final attempt to prove or rule out the wallaby’s existence entirely.

Wallabies were brought into New Zealand around the late 1800s for game hunting and their valuable skins. However, they are now considered a ‘‘major pest’’, Auckland Council head of natural environment delivery Phil Brown said.

While no physical evidence of a wallaby has been found at the park, it was important to thoroughly investigate the sighting, as wallabies can cause a lot of damage to farms, the environment and forest ecosystems. ‘‘We really don’t want them establishing in Auckland,’’ Brown said.

Known wallaby populations in the Bay of Plenty, Waikato and South Canterbury areas and Kawau Island in the Hauraki Gulf are the subject of significant pest eradication efforts, as without intervention it is feared they could spread across a third of New Zealand in the next 50 years.

This could prove devastating for native wildlife, as demonstrated by the situation on Kawau Island. Governor Sir George Grey bought Kawau Island in 1862 and introduced a variety of exotic plants and animals. However, many species did not survive due to the herbivore wallabies destroying the vegetation.

According to the Department of Conservation, the presence of wallabies could be detrimental to the island’s kiwi and North Island weka populations as they strip the ground of leaves and thus reduce the amount of worms and insects for the birds to feed on.

After five hours of searching about 160 hectares, Interpine Innovation director David Herries said he was confident there was no wallaby living at Long Bay Regional Park.

The search was conducted with a thermal camera, which detects heat to indicate the presence of an animal. The drone is then paused while a night-vision camera identifies the animal.

‘‘That allows us to actually zoom right in and literally see the bunny’s ears tweaking around and hopping, or a hedgehog crawling.

‘‘It’s always a challenge to find that one particular animal out there across a wide area. We weren’t lucky enough to find a wallaby in the regional park.’’

However, the team did manage to spot a range of birds and ducks, and pests such as hedgehogs, rabbits and possums.

The news that no wallaby was found will come as a relief to some locals, who did not want to see it shot and killed, which Brown previously indicated would be the likely outcome.

Herries said that, from a pest management perspective, it was ‘‘fantastic’’ Auckland did not have any wallabies.

Seven possible wallaby sightings have been reported to Auckland Council since 2015, including at Wenderholm Regional Park, Pohuehue, Long Bay Regional Park and Waiwera – all in north Auckland – and one at Tapapakanga Regional Park in southeast Auckland.

None of those reports resulted in a wallaby being found, but it cost the council $12,700 to be sure, including $4000 for Wednesday’s drone survey. Additionally, given the proximity of the north Auckland sightings, the council ordered a large-scale helicopter survey of a 9000-hectare area of likely wallaby habitat between north O¯ rewa, Warkworth and Pu¯ hoi in June, at a cost of $11,800. No wallabies were detected.

As for the Long Bay wallaby – or not-wallaby, as we now know – Brown said it was likely Auckland Council would end its investigation.

‘‘Because we didn’t manage to find any wallabies on our survey, we think the investigation will be wrapped up now. We’ll obviously just keep and ear out and an eye out for any more sightings.’’

It was possible the April sighting, which Brown said ‘‘certainly sounded credible’’, may have been a large rabbit or hare.

‘‘There are other animals that look similar to a wallaby, particularly if you only get a fleeting glimpse. It’s also possible that it was a wallaby, and that’s why we always have to go and have a good check. It was really important that we stop a new pest inflicting more damage on Auckland.’’

Anyone who sees a wallaby in Auckland is asked to report it to Auckland Council by emailing pestfree@aucklandcouncil.govt.nz.

‘‘It’s also possible that it was a wallaby . . . It was really important that we stop a new pest inflicting more damage on Auckland.’’ Phil Brown Auckland Council head of natural environment delivery