THE ECOLOGY OF THE KOOMAL (TRICHOSURUS VULPECULA HYPOLEUCUS) AND NGWAYIR (PSEUDOCHEIRUS OCCIDENTALIS) IN THE JARRAH FORESTS OF SOUTH-WESTERN AUSTRALIA Adrian Francis Wayne A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy May 2005 Centre for Resource and Environmental Studies The Australian National University, Canberra To Julia Northin and all of my family, for their love and support The ecology of the koomal and ngwayir in the jarrah forest DECLARATION This thesis is my own work except where otherwise acknowledged (see Acknowledgements and Preface). Adrian Francis Wayne May 2005 i The ecology of the koomal and ngwayir in the jarrah forest ACKNOWLEDGMENTS First, I would like to thank my supervisory panel. I am most grateful to David Lindenmayer (Principal Supervisor), Neil Burrows, Mike Calver and Ric How for their guidance, support and comments on this thesis. Many thanks to Ann Cowling for her statistical advice and assistance with the analyses for three of the chapters (2, 3 and 7). I am most grateful to Simon Knapp for his collaboration and diligence with the logistic regression modelling in Chapter 6. I also thank Christine Donnelly for conducting many of the analyses in Chapters 2, 3 and 7. Joern Fischer taught me ‘R’ scripting and assisted with the analyses in the two life history chapters (4 and 5). I deeply value Joern Fischer and Ioan Fazey for all of their help in so many ways, including their assistance to improve my writing style, comments on earlier drafts, discussions, support, advice and their friendship. Ross Cunningham provided valued design advice in the early development phase of this research. To Colin Ward, Chris Vellios and John Rooney I am indebted for help in the field and with data processing. These poor guys had to endure the consequences of my enthusiasm to do so much. The nature of the work was physically challenging and sustained. The early mornings, the many long days and the ‘all-nighters’ in the field were challenging in their own right but also affected their family and private lives. I am deeply grateful to these men and their families. I am deeply grateful to the 125 volunteers that collectively contributed 8,621 hours of fieldwork and data processing. It has been a pleasure meeting and working with such a diversity of people. Their help has been instrumental to the success of this research – without them this would not have been possible. The credit and achievements made here are also theirs. In order of the total hours contributed, I thank each of the following, Jamie Flett, Kate Fisher, Donna Stanaway, Catherine Sorokine, Bevan Davis, Kristy Chapman, Ryan Glowacki, Jennifer Langton, Emma Rowe, Desmond Brennan, Alicia Sparnon, Patrick Coffey, Justine Shailes, Janis White, Tak Kawakami, James Walmsley, Erin Harris, Malte Riquarts, Anne Sepkus, Keith White, Maren Heckel, Melissa Bexley, Frank Parrotte, Adrian Maynier, Evelyn Coral, Kate George, Zara Kivell, Helen McCutcheon, Nicola Scott, Jacqueline Purvis, Karen Bonney, Venicia Giannasi, Claire Macleay, Ben Stone, Jane Hancock, Angela Mercier, Gretchen Volker, Kelly Jones, Christopher Williams, Anthea Bell, Michelle Keppel, Amy Sinagra, Andre Labiche, Michelle Davies, Monica Russell, Luke Bentley, Tyson Podd, Alan Hind, Marit Hansen, Ormond Waters, Jane Barbour, Jill Turk, Rachel Wicks, Betti Schwender, Bob Crow, Frances Kirchner, Bill Hawthorn, Julie Hawthorn, Timothy Wood, Kristine Grayson, Cathy Page, Kim Penney, Catherine Williams, Jim ii The ecology of the koomal and ngwayir in the jarrah forest Broughton, Gaetane Thirion , Janelle Atkinson, Giles Harford, Fiona Kirkpatrick, Jessica Lynas, Rachael Mercy, John Riley, Clinton Roworth, Heather Taylor, Amanda McGinty, Colleen Murphy, Leah Honka, Owen Hale, Jennifer Jackson, Hailey Maloney, Melissa Farrelly, Makiko Shigeno, Seamus Balkin, Steve Giles, Geertie Mueller, Russell Peterkin, David Pond, Daniel Taubner, Sharon Fox, Michelle Hanlon, Derani Sullivan, Glen Schloderer, Nicki Warnock, Anna King, Bernard Simpson, Anja Steinwendler, Kristy Vella , Kristina Schirmer, Erin D'Raine, Glen Bathols, Rachel Ellison, Alesha Aitken, Jessica Croft, Shannon McGrane, Ian Wardell-Johnson, Debbie Eaton, Rebbekah Lamont, Tatiana Perrotta, Jessica Leeson, Leah Martin, Ditiro Coyne, Andrew Mills, Harriet Mills, Alison Dugand, June Parrotte, Jennifer Dryden, Megan Dilly, Ioan Fazey, Christina Paul, Kathleen Murphy, Vinh Nguyen, Bill Smart, Rebecca Coffey, Nina Petrie, Narrelle Rooney and Samuel Vellios. Special mention must go to Leslie Harrison and her dedication and countless hours over many years caring for injured and orphaned wildlife in the region. The success of this research is fundamentally due to the Department of Conservation and Land Management (CALM). The professionalism, dedication and the positive and co- operative working culture among its employees are its greatest assets and are the key to achieving greater biodiversity conservation outcomes for Western Australia. To the senior managers within the Science Division – Neil Burrows, Lachie McCaw, John McGrath and Keith Morris – I am deeply appreciative for their parts in giving me the opportunity to take study leave for my PhD and for their support and help facilitating this research. This research would not have been possible without financial support. CALM provided the principal financial, resource and logistical support for this research. The Centre for Resources and Environmental Studies (CRES, ANU) also provided financial and resource support. I was a grateful recipient of an Australian Postgraduate Award while employed part- time with CALM. A large number of CALM employees also provided technical assistance and information. I am grateful to all of them. Some of these people included Shane French and Tom Hamilton who helped enormously with the management and development of GIS data; Dave Roberts for technical assistance with Access database development. Data, information, assistance and/or equipment were provided by Martin Rayner, Christine Rumley, Danny Blechynden and Pat Collins from Forest Management Branch; Ian Wilson, Wolf Tiedemann, Carl Cicchini, Brian Moss, Rod Simmonds, Jeff Bennett, Brian Whittred, Dave Butcher, John Steele and Ian Rhodes, among others from Donnelly District; Li Shu and Femina Metcalfe from Fire Management Services; GIS data from the Geographic Information Services Section; Roger Hearn from Warren Region; Paul de Tores, Kim Whitford, Margaret Langley, Jo Kinal, Joanne Smith, Lisa Wright and Nicky Marlow from Perth offices of the Science Division; all of the staff at the Manjimup Research Centre of the Science Division, especially Robyn Bowles and Verna Tunsell; and many people working at CALM in Manjimup also iii The ecology of the koomal and ngwayir in the jarrah forest volunteered their time to help with the field work. Alan Seymour and Mark Read from the Forest Products Commission were also helpful. I am particularly grateful to everyone at CRES. The friendly, positive, supportive and stimulating community environment at CRES made it a pleasure and privilege to be working in such a productive environment. Thank you to the general staff at CRES for their support and for doing a great job keeping the ‘wheels oiled’, and to the academic staff for their interest and discussions. I also enjoyed and am grateful for the collegial exchanges with fellow students including Hezri Adnan, Nadeena Beck, Anthony Clark, Ioan Fazey, Adam and Annika Felton, Joern Fischer, Takahisa Furuichi, Leah Gibbs, Jake Gillen, Sandy Gilmore, Ben Gilna, Donna Hazell, Bernadette Hince, Frank Jotzo, Adrian Manning, Nicki Munro, Ana Rubio, Amir Sadoddin, Glenn Sanecki, Debbie Saunders, Kate Sherren, Celina Smith, Jeanette Stanley and many others. Thank you also to John and Janet Stein for the provision of bioclimatic data. Particularly during the early stages of the PhD, I discussed this project with a number of professionals including Ian Abbott, Matthew Williams, Paul de Tores, Barb Jones, Henry Nix, Richard Hobbs, Denis Saunders, Mick Tanton, Rob Heinsohn, Hugh Tyndale-Biscoe, Rod Kavanagh, Bill Foley, Jack Bradshaw and Per Christensen. For their time and thoughts I am very grateful. I thank Julia Northin, Margaret Starace, Nicki Munro, Ioan Fazey, Leah Gibbs and Anthony Wayne for their help in suggesting ways to improve the final presentation of this thesis. To my family, who mean so much to me, thank you for your love and support. Thank you especially to all three of my parents for their nurture and encouragement. Thanks also to my siblings – to Ruth, you are my hero! Thanks to my grandparents who give me sense of meaning and inspiration. To all my family and friends thank you so much! You enrich my life in so many ways. Last and by no means least, thank you very much to Julia Northin, for her love, support and understanding. For too much of the past few years, Julia has lived with my absence so that I could pursue my research aspirations. Thank you for keeping the ‘home fires burning’ both in our relationship and at home, especially during my fieldwork and my extended time at CRES in Canberra. iv The ecology of the koomal and ngwayir in the jarrah forest PREFACE With the exception of Chapter 1 (Introduction) and Chapter 8 (Synthesis), this thesis is presented as a series of logically connected manuscripts. All of these (except Chapter 6) have been submitted for publication and are at various stages of review. It is intended that Chapter 6 will be submitted for publication in scientific journals as two separate manuscripts. Because core chapters of this thesis are intended as stand-alone pieces of work for publication in scientific journals, some repetition between chapters was unavoidable. In addition, there are some stylistic differences according to the target journals. For example, in the chapters regarding the life history of possums, species are referred to using binomial nomenclature; in the remainder of the thesis common names are predominantly used. While the content remains the same, minor changes have been made to the formatting of each submitted manuscript for general presentation consistency within the thesis. Citation details of these submissions are provided at the beginning of the chapters.