{"id":607184,"date":"2026-04-14T22:55:15","date_gmt":"2026-04-14T22:55:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/607184\/"},"modified":"2026-04-14T22:55:15","modified_gmt":"2026-04-14T22:55:15","slug":"scientists-push-to-have-platypus-listed-as-vulnerable-on-conservation-register","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/607184\/","title":{"rendered":"Scientists push to have platypus listed as ‘vulnerable’ on conservation register"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jessica McDonald thought she saw a rat scurry across the road while picking up a friend from a north Queensland pub.<\/p>\n

But something made her pick up her phone, and she quickly found out the “rat” was a platypus.<\/p>\n

Loading…<\/p>\n

“He was very speedy, very fast,” the Ilbilbie local said.<\/p>\n

“I didn’t expect platypuses to be that fast.”<\/p>\n

Ms McDonald said she was also surprised to find the monotreme more than half a kilometre from the banks of the Pioneer River in Marian, west of Mackay.<\/p>\n

She said she briefly thought about picking it up but decided against it.<\/p>\n

“I remembered that the males had a barb at the back, so I didn’t really want to get spiked,” she said.<\/p>\n

A ‘vulnerable’ species?<\/p>\n

Wildlife Queensland’s Tamielle Brunt said it was probably a good idea to leave the native animal alone, and added people were increasingly encountering them near their habitat.<\/p>\n

Dr Brunt said that although platypus were elusive, sightings were not uncommon in the region, with the Broken River at Eungella further west often touted as the best place to see one in the wild.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Tamielle Brunt has undertaken a systematic review of platypus populations in Queensland. (Supplied: Tamielle Brunt)<\/p>\n

Dr Brunt said it was natural for male platypuses to move further from their burrows, with some travelling more than 20 kilometres.<\/p>\n

“They can be quite curious,” she said.Fisherman spots ultra-rare pink platypus<\/a><\/p>\n

In a remote river in Victoria’s east, a fisherman says he has encountered an ultra-rare pink platypus, one of only a handful ever sighted in the past 200 years.<\/p>\n

Dr Brunt said external factors like Marian’s urban expansion may cause them to move further from waterways.<\/p>\n

“Certainly, increased pollutants, and the closer you go to urban spaces, the flash flows can increase erosion and destruction of habitat areas,” she said.<\/p>\n

Dr Brunt said a comparison of historical records of platypus sightings with a recent survey of their populations in south-east Queensland had shown a marked decrease in numbers.<\/p>\n

It is not something she wants to see repeated in north Queensland, and Dr Brunt is part of a push to have platypuses recognised as “vulnerable” under the national Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act.<\/p>\n

\"a<\/p>\n

DNA testing in south-east Queensland has revealed platypus numbers are declining. (Supplied: Alison Pighills)<\/p>\n

They are not recognised as officially threatened.<\/p>\n

She said the application in 2020 was knocked back in part because the elusive monotremes were difficult to count accurately.<\/p>\n

“Even when you go and trap them and tag them, you never know if you’re really ever getting every animal in the system,” Dr Brunt said.Sightings could mask population impacts<\/p>\n

Fauna Rescue Whitsundays treasurer Alison Pighills said sightings had increased and she had personally been called to two platypus jobs in Marian so far this year.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Alison Pighills says before this year, a call-out for a platypus rescue was extremely rare. (ABC Tropical North: Liam O’Connell)<\/p>\n

She said her first call to a platypus rescue, and her first up-close encounter ever, was checking it for road damage.<\/p>\n

“It seemed absolutely fine,” Ms Pighills said.<\/p>\n

The second call was to reports of a platypus floundering near a drain.<\/p>\n

However, the animal disappeared before she arrived.<\/p>\n

Dr Brunt said while population growth could make human\u2013platypus interactions more likely, more anecdotal experiences could mask a decline in numbers.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

A platypus rescued by Alison Pighills and later returned to the wild. (Supplied: Alison Pighills)<\/p>\n

“In communities in south-east Queensland, we’re certainly starting to hear that narrative that they’re not seeing them,” she said.<\/p>\n

“We’ve got a shifting baseline, and we’re just trying to get data to prove to the government that we really need to be on the front foot of this.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jessica McDonald thought she saw a rat scurry across the road while picking up a friend from a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":607185,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[295414,64,63,295415,295413,18562,96706,295416,295412,128,29290,338,93016],"class_list":{"0":"post-607184","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-alison-pighills","9":"tag-au","10":"tag-australia","11":"tag-conservation-register","12":"tag-fauna-rescue-whitsundays","13":"tag-pioneer-valley","14":"tag-platypus","15":"tag-platypus-sightings","16":"tag-railway-hotel","17":"tag-science","18":"tag-vulnerable-species","19":"tag-wildlife","20":"tag-wildlife-sanctuary"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/607184","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=607184"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/607184\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/607185"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=607184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=607184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=607184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}