Rehabilitation Centre (Inc.)

What is a bilby?

The bilby is a type of bandicoot, scientific name: Macrotis lagotis. The bilby has many common names, including: Greater Bilby, Dalgyte, and Rabbit-Eared Bandicoot. With its soft grey fur, white underbelly, black and white tail, long pointy pink nose, and large ears, the bilby is a very distinctive looking animal. It is a nocturnal marsupial, with a backward-facing pouch. The bilby is an omnivore and its natural diet includes seeds, fruits, bulbs, fungi, worms, insects, and other small animals. The bilby is very proficient at digging, and lives in deep underground burrows..

Why is there a bilby breeding programme?

The bilby once inhabited approximately 70% of the Australian mainland. However, destruction of suitable habitat through land clearing, and competition and predation by introduced animal species such as rabbits, foxes and feral cats, has greatly reduced the wild bilby population. Bilbies are now restricted to a much smaller area, in the remote arid regions of northern Western Australia, the Northern Territory and Queensland. Classified as a Threatened Species, the Bilby is the subject of an Australia-wide Recovery Plan. The aim of the Recovery Plan is to increase the numbers of bilbies by captive breeding, and reintroduce them into suitable areas within their former range.

How is the breeding programme conducted?

Bilbies are currently being bred in several captive breeding facilities around Australia.  One of these facilities is located at the Kanyana Wildlife Rehabilitation Centre, in an outer suburb of Perth, Western Australia.  The Kanyana Bilby Breeding Programme is conducted under the guidance of the WA Department of Environment and Conservation (DEC) and receives funding under DEC’s Western Shield Programme.  However, the day to day running of the Kanyana Bilby Breeding Programme depends entirely on volunteers.  A large number of volunteers are involved in caring for the Kanyana bilbies, working two shifts per day, every day of the year.   

In any animal captive breeding programme it is important to maintain the greatest possible genetic diversity within the population.  The bilbies in the Kanyana breeding programme are paired according to recommendations made by a geneticist with the Australasian Regional Association of Zoological Parks and Aquaria (ARAZPA), who maintains the bilby studbook and provides advice to all the bilby breeding facilities around Australia.  Following advice from the geneticist, animals are regularly transferred between different captive breeding centres.   

History of the Kanyana Bilby Breeding Programme

The Kanyana bilby breeding programme commenced in 1996 with the arrival at Kanyana of the first breeding pair, Bet-Bet and Basil.  Since then more than 125 bilbies have passed through Kanyana.  The Kanyana bilby breeding programme has succeeded in producing over 85 baby bilbies, and these animals have been distributed throughout Australia to other breeding facilities, zoos and release sites.  Many of the Kanyana bilbies have been released into a “soft-release” site, a predator-proof compound in the Dryandra Woodland, as part of DEC’s “Return to Dryandra” project.  The bilbies at Dryandra are surviving and successfully breeding in a natural bushland setting within two 10 hectare enclosures.  Once sufficient numbers have built up within the Dryandra compound, animals are released to suitable sites in the wild.  As a result of some of these releases, bilbies are once again living in the wild in the south-west of Western Australia, after disappearing from this part of the State more than eighty years ago. 

Latest news from the Kanyana Bilby Breeding Programme

Kanyana currently has fifteen bilbies, eight males and seven females.  The animals range in age from a few months old to over eight years old. 

2006 highlights: 

• Four baby bilbies were born at Kanyana in 2006, two males (Yandari and Pinjah) and two females (Biara and Jandoo).  Yandari was born to Karlang and Marran.  Twins Jandoo and Pinjah were born to Meeka and Boya.  Biara was born to Djinda and Danny Boy.  Three of the 2006 babies are still at Kanyana, and one has been transferred to South Australia. 
• Two new males arrived to join the Kanyana breeding programme during 2006: Marran was transferred from the Monarto breeding centre in South Australia, and Malik came from the Peron breeding centre in northern Western Australia. 
• In September 2006 a juvenile wild female bilby (Jalalay) arrived at Kanyana after being found on a roadside near Fitzroy Crossing (in northern WA).  This was a very exciting event, as wild bilbies are rarely captured, and they introduce valuable new genes into the captive breeding population.             

Young boy Yandari - 16 Sep 2006

2007 highlights: 

• Another four baby bilbies were born at Kanyana during 2007.  Once again, the babies included two males and two females, and once again Meeka produced twins (this time with new male Malik).  The twins were aptly named Bublee and Deedjaa (Aboriginal words meaning brother and sister).  On a very exciting note, Jalalay produced her first offspring, a particularly large and very healthy baby boy named Pindellup (which means “a lot of digging”), fathered by Marran.  The fourth baby bilby for 2007, a girl named Nanga (which means Sun) was born to Karlang and Boya. 
• Other happenings during 2007 included the transfer of two females (Kimberley and Jandoo) to the Monarto breeding centre in South Australia. 
• Two older animals (Danny Boy and Djinda) were retired from the Kanyana breeding programme and transferred to the Perth Zoo. 
• Groucho celebrated his eighth birthday in July 2007 and is the oldest bilby ever housed at Kanyana.  (The average bilby lifespan in captivity is between six and seven years, although the age record for a bilby held in captivity currently stands at nine years and seven months!)

For more information about bilbies, including the Return to Dryandra Project, and the Barna Mia visitors’ centre at Dryandra, visit the DEC website at:  http://www.naturebase.net/