ACT Parks' Brett McNamara at the Namadgi National Park trying to spot the albino kangaroo. Photo: Rohan Thomson
Bush hanging off the Brindabella Mountains like a well worn work shirt is full of surprises which capture worldwide interest.
An albino kangaroo photographed by ACT ranger Ben Stephenson in Namadgi National Park, and featured in the Canberra Times has since appeared on news websites throughout Australia and the United Kingdom.
ACT Government ecologist Dr Don Fletcher said eastern grey kangaroos were so prolific in Canberra Australian Geographic's webpage recommended international tourists seeking out the marsupials should come to the national capital.
A rare albino kangaroo at the Namadgi National Park. Photo: Rohan Thomson
"If you've got a lot of animals, then these rare things are going to come to notice. My suspicion with these eastern greys, when you've got tens of thousands of them, the something that only occurs in so many tens of thousands of kangaroos is gong to pop up."
Dr Fletcher said on Tasmania's Bruny Island Tasmania, albino wallabies were so numerous some were actually mating.
"The general idea of albinism is it is a double recessive, so you need both mother and father to have a recessive gene for albinism, so chances of it happening are low.
Casper the albino echidna goes for a walk before being released into a remote location at Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve. Photo: Rohan Thomson
"If you could see parents of that albino at Namadgi, and other albinos, they'd be normal coloured and its offspring will be normal coloured, if it has them because it will mate in all likelihood with an animal that hasn't got the recessive gene."
Dr Fletcher has received reports and photographs of albino kangaroos at Gundaroo, Majura training area, Mt Majura and Kowen.
Animals to have surprised senior parks manager Brett McNamara range from a platypus which hid overnight under the bonnet of a car which had picked it up last month while crossing the Murrumbidgee River to an albino echidna which wandered into the open at Pialligo last year.
McNamara about to release a female platypus back into the water at Angle Crossing. Photo: Jeffrey Chan
A ranger in the Northern Territory years ago, Mr McNamara was surveying crocodiles on Douglas Daly River, when he saw a drinking buffalo on dusk in such a classic, vividly-lit setting he reached for his camera.
"As I did that the water just exploded. A croc came up and grabbed it by the snout and dragged it in," Mr McNamara said. "That is one of those images you take to your grave."
He says Namadgi's soaring wedge-tailed eagles, crows feasting on bogong moths and fragile corroboree frogs crawling through Bendora arboretum's sphagnum bog are constant reminders of the territory's rich wildlife.
Mr McNamara said albino animals were prone to attack because of their colour and poorer health, but if rangers saw one in trouble it was unlikely they would intervene.
Care for the national parks was more about managing the human element.
"We really don't manage the environment because mother nature has been doing that for many, many years very well. It is only the last 130-140 years in the ACT context people have had an impact on this landscape," he said.
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