Parma (White-throated) Wallaby

The Parma wallaby was first described by British naturalist John Gould in about 1840. A shy cryptic creature of the wet sclerophyll forests of northern New South Wales, it was never commonly encountered and, even before the end of the 19th century, it was believed to be extinct.

In 1965 workers on Kawau Island (near Auckland, New Zealand) trying to control a plague of introduced tammar wallabies (a widespread and fairly common species in Australia) were astonished to discover that some of the pests were not tammar wallabies, but a miraculously surviving population of Parma wallabies—a species long thought extinct. The extermination effort was put on hold while individuals were captured and sent to institutions in Australia and around the world in the hope that they would breed in captivity and could eventually be reintroduced to their native habitat.

The renewed interest in the Parma wallaby soon led to another milestone: in 1967 it was found that they still existed in the forests near Gosford, New South Wales. Further investigation showed that the Parma wallaby was alive and well, and although not common, was to be found in forests along the Great Dividing Range from near Gosford almost as far north as the Queensland border.

The offspring of the Kawau Island population are smaller than their fully wild relatives, even when provided with ample food: it appears that competition for limited food resources on the island selected for smaller individuals, an incipient example of the phenomenon of insular dwarfism.