Inside a wildlife rescuer’s struggle to find a home for rescued kangaroo joeys since 2020 government reforms

Everyone loves a cute kangaroo joey, but the issues rescuers face when trying to give them permanent homes can be more complicated than just watching them hop into the sunset.

Clare Brown is the president of Mid West Marsupial Carers, and her Chapman Valley property is home to rescued joeys ranging from 1kg-30kg.

By working with joey carers throughout the region, her group sees about 50 of the rescued and rehabilitated marsupials each year.

“There’s three key areas to running any wildlife group,” Ms Brown said.

“One’s getting carers to do the job, having the funds and resources to do the job, and then, after all that hard work, having a place for the animals that you’ve rehabilitated to be released safely.”

Another stumbling block has been a code of practice for wildlife rehabilitation brought in by the Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions in 2020, featuring new regulations that Ms Brown said had previously been “very loose”.

“It forced everyone’s hand to ensure that what rehabilitators were doing was safe,” she said.

“But it did cost the group, because then we had people that couldn’t continue in that role.”

Ms Brown said there was confusion among the group about the new policies, and specifically whether it could still release rehabilitated joeys into national parks.

“We were told that they shut down a couple of the national parks and didn’t allow us to release into them,” she said.

The code of practice specifies that joeys should be released at the site they came from, but Ms Brown said she often did not know where a joey came from when a member of the public brought it to her. Any sites other than the original point of rescue must be approved by the DBCA.

She said the DBCA’s newly appointed wildlife officer in the Mid West region was working with the rescue group to look at other options, but communication had been difficult as the position had previously been vacant for about a year.

A DCBA spokesperson said: “Rehabilitated wildlife must be released once fit to do so in the location it was found, if that location is known and the habitat remains suitable.

“If the original habitat or location is unknown or determined unsuitable, DBCA wildlife officers in the Mid West work with local rehabilitation volunteers to identify an alternative suitable environment for release, which can include national parks and conservation reserves.”

Ms Brown said there was a variety of challenges when releasing joeys on private land, such as whether the landholders had a dog management plan in place, or whether they allowed recreational shooting on their property. It is also mandatory that the area has adequate resources for the kangaroos to live off, and an ongoing water supply.

“We’ve pretty much floundered, I reckon for probably the last four years,” she said.

“It’s been this time of the year has been a real pressure point, because all our pens are full. We’re waiting for our kangaroos to be released, but we don’t have places for them to go, and the longer you keep a kangaroo in care, the higher the risk of humanisation.”

Rehabilitating a kangaroo costs about $2000, which only escalates the longer it takes to release them. It also means longer exposure to people, and they cannot be released if they get too used to human care and attention.

“If we can’t release a kangaroo, the bottom line is that they’re to be euthanised,” Ms Brown said.

Wildlife rehabilitation can be tiring, but Ms Brown said when she looked into the eyes of her joeys it was all worth it.

“They’re incredibly vulnerable, as animals,” she said.

“There is something about a kangaroo . . . Qantas flies a kangaroo on its tail. Australian Made has it as its emblem. We stick it on our coat of arms. It’s an animal to be celebrated.”