Wallabies in Britain and the Isle of Man

Wallabies come from Australia and New Guinea. A few small groups have lived wild in Britain and on the Isle of Man for decades.

What a wallaby is

A wallaby is a small or middle sized member of the kangaroo family, native to Australia and New Guinea. The name kangaroo is kept for the four largest species.

Wallabies are marsupials, mammals whose young finish growing in a pouch. After a pregnancy of about a month, the tiny young, called a joey, crawls into its mother's pouch. It stays there for several months.

A red-necked wallaby has four sets of teeth in its lifetime. New molars push the old ones out and replace them.

The red-necked wallaby

The wild wallabies in Britain and on the Isle of Man are red-necked wallabies, also called Bennett's wallabies. They have reddish fur on the head and back.

The species comes from south-east Australia and Tasmania.

The Isle of Man

In the 1960s, red-necked wallabies escaped from a wildlife park into the Ballaugh Curragh, a wetland in the north of the island. They have adapted well to the Manx climate.

Sightings have since spread across the whole island. Manx Wildlife Trust puts the proven population at 870 or more, and its estimate at 1,000 to 1,300.

The trust is concerned about harm to the Ballaugh Curragh, which is the island's most important wetland. On the Isle of Man, it is an offence to release a wallaby into the wild or let one escape.

Loch Lomond

In the 1960s, about four to six red-necked wallabies were released onto Inchconnachan, an island in Loch Lomond. The island is wooded, has no farm animals and has no permanent residents.

NatureScot, Scotland's nature agency, records that the wallabies bred there and stayed.

England

For several decades, wallabies lived wild in the Peak District. The colony began with five animals released from a private collection in 1939 and 1940.

It was once the best known and best studied group in Britain. It is now thought to have died out.

An early map of wallabies in Britain also showed a group in Sussex. Wallabies are still seen in parts of England, including the Chiltern Hills.

A study of confirmed sightings across Britain from 2008 to 2018 found more in August than in any other month.

Reporting a sighting

Local environmental records centres collect wildlife records for a set area, usually a county. Their national association has a map to help you find yours.

You can also send a sighting to iRecord, where experts check records and share them for research.

Researchers counting wallabies in Britain kept only sightings backed by a photo or more than one witness, so a photo helps if you can take one.

Zoos and the law

Zoos and wildlife parks keep wallabies, and the Isle of Man group began with escapes from one. BIAZA, the professional body for zoos and aquariums in the UK and Ireland, has more than 100 members.

The Animal Welfare Act 2006 gives anyone who owns or keeps an animal a duty of care. That means meeting its needs for a suitable place to live, a suitable diet and normal behaviour, and protecting it from pain, injury and disease.

In Great Britain, section 14 of the 1981 Wildlife and Countryside Act makes releasing a non-native animal into the wild, or letting one escape, an offence. The red-necked wallaby is named in the Act's list of such animals for England and Wales.

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