Dasyurus viverrinus: Eastern Quoll

Eastern Quoll - Dasyurus viverrinus
( Shaw, 1800 )

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Subspecies:	Unknown
Est. World Population:	10000-12000

CITES Status:	NOT LISTED
IUCN Status:	Endangered
U.S. ESA Status:	NOT LISTED

Body Length:
Tail Length:
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Top Speed:
Jumping Ability:	(Horizontal)

Life Span:	in the Wild
Life Span:	in Captivity

Sexual Maturity:	(Females)
Sexual Maturity:	(Males)
Litter Size:
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Habitat:

The Eastern Quoll is largely solitary and is nocturnal and only occasionally forages or basks during daylight. It is found in a variety of habitats including rainforest, heathland, alpine areas and scrub. However, it prefers dry grassland and forest mosaics which are bounded by agricultural land, particularly where pasture grubs are common (Jones et al. 2013, DPIPWE 2012). During the day, animals sleep in nests made under rocks, in underground burrows or fallen logs. The Eastern Quoll is an opportunistic carnivore that takes live prey and scavenges. It is an impressive hunter, taking mammals such as rabbits, mice and rats, and small elapid snakes and skinks. They sometimes scavenge morsels of food from around feeding Tasmanian Devils Sarcophilus harrisii. However, the main component of its diet at lower altitudes is invertebrates, especially agricultural pests such as the cockchafer beetle and corbie grub. In alpine areas, invertebrates form a small component of the diet; carrion and some fruits are also eaten (Blackhall 1980, Godsell 1983, Jones and Barmuta 1998, DPIPWE 2012).

Feral cats are well suited to taking quolls, as well as the prey that quolls eat. Predation and direct competition potentially force the Eastern Quoll from its natural habitat. Feral cat numbers may have increased in Tasmania coinciding with the rapid decline of the Tasmanian Devil, which are hypothesised to have depressed feral cat numbers (Fancourt 2011, Hollings 2012, Hollings et al. 2013). However, feral cats have been present in Tasmania for many decades and quolls have survived.

Dogs, road kills (Jones 1993), and, mostly in the past, illegal poisoning or trapping are additional causes of mortality, but population level effects are unknown. Red Foxes are a future threat. Jones et al. (2004) reported that Eastern Quolls lacked an appropriate anti-predator response to foxes, suggesting that they would be vulnerable to predation by foxes. The Red Fox may now be present in Tasmania (Berry et al. 2007, Sarre et al. 2012, DPIPWE 2013) and experience on mainland Australia shows that, if Red Foxes establish, fox predation will have a severe, possibly catastrophic impact on this species in the medium- to long-term.

Range:

The Eastern Quoll was previously widespread in mainland southeastern Australia including New South Wales (NSW NPWS 1993), Victoria (Menkhorst 1995) and eastern South Australia (Jones 2008). It became extinct on the mainland c. mid-1960s (Menkhorst 1995, Jones 2008, DPIPWE 2012), with sightings at Kew and Ivanhoe, Melbourne until the early 1960s, maybe later (P. Menkhorst pers. comm. 2014); the last confirmed mainland sighting being at Vaucluse (NSW) in 1963 (Dickman et al. 2001), and it is now restricted to Tasmania and Bruny Island (Tasmania). Rounsevell et al. (1991) recorded it in 30% of 10 km x 10 km grids in Tasmania and reported that it was not present in large tracts of rainforest. Jones et al. (2014) reported a high probability of occurrence over much of the eastern half and central-north coast of Tasmania, with areas of intermediate probability extending to about the eastern two-thirds of the island and to the north-west of Tasmania, with isolated populations in the southwest. Similar results were found using MaxEnt climate modelling (Johnson et al. 2012, Fancourt et al. 2015). Eastern Quoll distribution is associated with low to moderate mean annual rainfall and includes a range of more open habitats, including open grassland (including farmland), tussock grassland, grassy woodland, dry eucalypt forest, coastal scrub and alpine heathland (Jones and Rose 1996, Jones and Barmuta 2000). It tends to be absent from large tracts of wet eucalypt forest and rainforest, unless these are adjacent to open and tussock grassland and heath.

Conservation:

1. Maintain distribution and abundance

2. Reduce feral cat predation

3. Eradicate or effectively control Red Foxes in Tasmania.

4. Should foxes become widely established, consider captive breeding as as precursor to translocation to an island or mainland 'island'.

5. Monitoring to understand processes influencing Eastern Quoll abundance changes.