AFTER seven weeks in Bathurst, the Bathurst Kangaroo Project’s intrepid Wesleyan University student researchers from Connecticut, USA are returning home.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
The students have completed the fieldwork stage of Dr Liv Baker’s research project into kangaroo stress ecology.
Over that time Angus McLean and Mariel Becker have spent six days a week from dawn until dusk and through rain, snow and shine collecting observational data on kangaroos in the Mount Panorama precinct.
Project co-ordinator Helen Bergen said they became a familiar sight riding their bicycles to Boundary Road Reserve or to the racetrack and the tip road at the back of the Mount.
Angus said they are leaving Bathurst with more than 600 pages of data recording kangaroo behaviour in response to daily changes and threats in their environment.
“There were noticeable differences in behaviour between the kangaroos we observed out of town, and between the three different mobs around the Mount,” he said.
“We’ve also collected a freezer full of kangaroo droppings being stored at Charles Sturt University, and which University of Technology Sydney will be testing for cortisol levels, which indicate stress.
“Our supervisor Dr Liv Baker from Wesleyan University will be analysing both sets of data and writing up a paper about how Mount Panorama kangaroos are responding to stressors in their environment.
“We’ve had so much support from people in Bathurst, and just want to say a special thank you to Clive and Marie Turner who let us to hang out with their wild mob of kangaroos at Billiwillinga for our first week.”
Dr Baker’s research project began mid-June with a workshop at Bathurst Art Gallery collating descriptions of kangaroo behaviours to inform the students’ character-state recognition records.
The workshop was attended by academics from three universities: Wesleyan University in Connect- icut, USA, University of Sydney and Charles Sturt University.
They were joined by representatives of WIRES and kangaroo handlers from Bathurst and Bungendore.
According to Ms Bergen, much has happened in the project through the year.
She said they’ve had a community ground survey confirming separate kangaroo mob numbers around Mount Panorama; the airing of an international kids tv show about Bathurst’s albino wallaroo; French correspondents’ Bathurst kangaroo story published around the world and fauna friendly fencing discussions.