Meet Shadow, one of Canberra's best-kept and most adorable secrets.
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At about 10 months old, he is one of just 80 southern brush-tailed rock wallabies left in the world, both in captivity and in the wild.
Shadow lives in the depths of the Tidbinbilla Nature Park at the breeding centre where the southern brush-tailed rock wallaby recovery program is well underway.
Originally from Mount Rothwell in Victoria, a conservation and research centre, Shadow's mum was brought to the ACT to help manage the genetics of the macropods in the captive breeding program.
At the time, four-month old Shadow was too small to be safely transported in his mother's pouch, so wildlife officers from ACT Parks and Conservation removed him and hand-raised him at Tidbinbilla.
Tidbinbilla became part of the national breeding program for the wallabies in 1996. The native animals are critically endangered, and are found in just two pockets in the wild, in the Grampians and East Gippsland.
There is an estimate that just 40 of the wallabies still survive in the wild in these areas, with the rest bred in captivity as part of the breeding program.
To increase the chances of survival of the species, Tidbinbilla's wildlife officers have pioneered an accelerated breeding technique called cross-fostering. This is where the joey of southern brush-tailed rock wallaby is removed from its mother and placed in the pouch of a similar species, in the case at Tidbinbilla, the yellow-footed rock wallaby.
The technique allows the female southern brush-tailed rock wallabies to produce anywhere from four to eight joeys per year. Naturally, the female would produce one and a half joeys each year.
ACT Parks and Conservation senior wildlife officer Scott Ryan said hand-raising Shadow, one of 27 of the animals at Tidbinbilla, was a good opportunity for the breeding program.
Mr Ryan said he hoped to conduct exclusive encounters with the little macropod to allow the community to connect with the program.
"He's really crucial for this community interaction and engagement and hopefully we can use that to help promote the plight of the rock wallaby," Mr Ryan said.
"People will be able to see a rock wallaby up close. These guys are often referred to as 'the shadow', hence his name, because in the wild they are very difficult to see and observe, and they're very shy as well."
However, Shadow is not at all shy. He ricochets off the walls at the captive breeding centre, playfully climbing on shoulders and sitting in laps.
"I adore Shadow," Mr Ryan said.
"All of the staff here do, and pretty much anyone who has an interaction with Shadow just love him. He's adorable, he's got a lot of character, he is a little man so there is a little bit of cheekiness to him but for the most part he does enjoy our interactions but only for a short period, he is still a rock wallaby at the end of the day."
The current aim for the southern brush-tailed rock wallaby breeding program is to increase the captive population to 200 before releasing more of the macropods into the wild in Victoria.
