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Gavin Bedford left, and Tony O'grady with a potential pet
Photo: Dennis Schulz
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by Dennis Schulz
A pair of Northern Territory University researchers have secured
the first license to hatch and market small reptiles such as
bearded dragons, turtles and goannas to the expanding Australian
pet market.
Tony O’Grady and Gavin Bedford have adapted the Northern
Territory Government’s doctrine of the sustainable use of
wildlife, ensuring that the landowners are paid for each animal
originating from their properties. Profits from the sales are used
to fund ongoing wildlife research, and so avoiding the vagaries of
government funding for science.
The researchers named their new business ‘Woma’ after
the central Australian python. Bedford was strongly influenced by a
speech he heard four years ago at Sydney University where the
audience was told there was a strong chance that 60 per cent of the
reptiles that Bedford and O’Grady want to study would be
extinct or in serious decline before the government was prepared to
fund research on them. It was a prospect that sparked a successful
application to the NT’s Parks and Wildlife Commission for a
license to capture or hatch designated native reptiles and resulted
in the advent of Woma.
Under the Woma system few reptiles are actually taken from the
wild. The researchers trap the reptiles and identify pregnant
females. The females are then given a hormone injection to
stimulate egg laying. They take the clutch of eggs and are tagged
so if they’re captured again, they can trace the
animal’s movements.
“We’re trying not to take adults and only very common
varieties,” said Bedford. “They have between three and
five clutches of eggs a year and we only take one clutch from each
female. If the eggs are fertile, we’ll hatch 99 per cent of
them.” According to PWCNT, taking only single clutches of
eggs has a minimal effect on the environment.
Landowners are an essential part of the sustainable use program and
are already enthusiastic backers of Woma. Because they are paid for
each animal or egg taken from the property, pastoralists now see
reptiles as a resource. “The landowners start to recognise an
economic value for the wildlife that’s on their
properties,” said O’Grady. “Hopefully that will
be an incentive so they’ll incorporate that wildlife habitat
into their management plans. They’ll be looking after the
whole habitat rather than concerning themselves only with the
cattle side.”
The animals are wholesaled to pet retailers operating in Victoria,
New South Wales and South Australia, with restrictions on sales
still existing in other states. The Federal Government continues to
restrict the export of Australian native species to overseas
markets. The reptile sector is the fastest growing section of the
pet industry and Woma sees urban animal lovers as their target
market.
“Our lizards make great pets for city kids who can’t
own a cat or a dog because of their lack of space,” says
Bedford. “They’re easily cared for and housed in
aquarium style setups.” Animals of this exotic nature cost
anywhere from $50 for a bearded dragon to $4000 a breeding pair for
small goannas.
Woma’s next growth phase will take on an unlikely tourism
component. In an effort to explore larger areas and cover
increasing costs, (where petrol is often $1.40 a litre) they will
invite paying research assistants to join them. Woma hopes to
initiate, over the next 18 months, a program that runs like Earth
Watch where people will pay for the privilege of working with the
researchers trapping and marking reptiles across central Australia,
in an effort to piece together their ecology.
Profits are already going back into research for tropical wildlife
management. Woma has just sponsored its first research scholarship
at NT University’s Key Centre for Tropical Wildlife
Management for a student to study the ecology of the spotted tree
monitor. “We’re already finding out a lot of
information that’s never before been known,” says
O’Grady. “We’re trying to feed that information
back to people who are in a position to do the research. And
we’re already achieving the goals set down by the strategy
for sustainable use of wildlife.”
