Spot-Tailed Quolls (Tiger Quolls)

The Spot-tailed Quoll, or Tiger Quoll, is Australia's largest carnivorous marsupial, growing up to a metre long and with some males as heavy as 7kg. They live in mature rainforest and dry sclerophyll forest, and mainly live on the forest floor (although they can climb trees), nesting in small caves, rocky banks and hollows. They are largely nocturnal and solitary, and communicate with other members of their loose groups through shared latrine sites. They have a similar diet to foxes, eating marsupials, reptiles, birds, rats and mammals, as well as carrion.

There are a number of different types of Quoll, all of which have been in decline ever since white settlement. The Eastern Quoll is now extinct on the mainland, although it still exists in Tasmania. The Western Quoll used to cover 70% of the mainland, but is now restricted to isolated pockets in the South-West of Western Australia. The Spot-tailed Quoll used to exist all the way from South East Queensland to Tasmania and across to South Australia. It is now extinct in South Australia, and what colonies remain in Victoria and NSW are physically and genetically isolated.

In East Gippsland, the areas on the Errinundra Plateau, Snowy River and Tingaringy are strongholds of the Spot-tailed Quoll. They also exist in the Otways, the only place where consistent surveys have taken place, and these surveys show a 7-fold decline since the 1960's. Due to the lack of surveying, the quolls status in heavily forested country is unknown, although it is safe to say they only exist in a few isolated and patchy remnants of habitat in the wet forests of Victoria and NSW.

The Flora and Fauna Guarantee Act Action Statement on Spot-tailed Quolls was started in September 2000, and was due out in December. It has not been released. Their status was upgraded last year from "Vulnerable" to "Endangered" in Victoria due to a decline in numbers. Federally, they are listed as "Vulnerable", although recent DNA studies indicate that the Victorian and Tasmanian Quolls could possibly be different species, which means that they would be even more rare, and should perhaps be listed as "Endangered" federally.

Despite their endangered status, the Department of Natural Resources and Environment does not show much interest in protecting the Spot-tailed Quoll. The East Gippsland Forest Management Plan gives only 500ha protection within a 1500ha radius, despite the fact that female quolls have an exclusive range of 1000ha and males an overlapping range of 3000ha. This means they need extremely large areas of habitat to maintain their territory and thus their survival.

One of the recommendations for the quolls survival is that off-park habitat protection in State Forest is ensured. However, there are only 5 quoll sites in East Gippsland state forest that are of the size recommended in the Forest Management Plan. All the other sites are too small, allow clearfell logging in them or are priority areas for fuel reduction burns.

The protection of quolls highlight the NRE's mismanagement of our forests. The priority of this Department is not to protect these rare and endangered species but to facilitate logging. Logging is a major threat to Quolls as it destroys their habitat, fragments their communities and kills their food supply. Logging roads not only facilitate logging, but also bring in feral cats and foxes, which kill Quolls and compete with them for food. Ironically, the NRE's response to this threat is to increase 1080 baiting for foxes in and around known Quoll habitats, which of course, will kill the Quoll, who is particularly suseptible to 1080 posion.