Bennett's wallabies (
N. r. rufogriseus) lives on
Bruny Island. There are significant introduced populations in the
Canterbury Region of New Zealand's South Island. In 1870, several Bennett's wallabies were transported from Tasmania to
Christchurch, New Zealand. Two females and one male from this stock were later released at Te Waimate, the property of
Waimate's first European settler
Michael Studholme. The year 1874 saw them freed in the Hunters Hills, where over the years their population has dramatically increased. Bennett's wallabies are now resident on approximately 350,000
ha of terrain in the Hunters Hills, including the
Two Thumb Range, the Kirkliston Range and the
Grampians. They have been declared an animal pest in the
Canterbury Region and land occupiers must contain the wallabies within specified areas. Bennett's wallaby is now widely regarded as a symbol of Waimate. There are also small colonies in England He also went on to locate wallabies with albinism in
Kenilworth,
Warwickshire. There is a small colony of red-necked wallabies on the island of
Inchconnachan,
Loch Lomond in
Argyll and Bute,
Scotland. This was founded in 1975 with two pairs taken from the
Whipsnade Zoo, and had risen to 26 individuals by 1993. There is a significant group of escaped red-necked wallabies living wild across the Isle of Man, which are the descendants of numerous escapes from a wildlife park on the island in the 1960s and 1970s. A 2017 study by estimated their number in the vicinity of the wildlife park to be 83 individuals, including a very small number of Parma wallabies. A 2023 study by the Manx Wildlife Trust using drone and thermal technology resulted in the first accurate count of the red-necked wallabies in the Ballaugh Curragh Area of Special Scientific Interest and Ramsar site. Two nocturnal surveys, carried out across 400 hectares of the Ballaugh Curragh over two consecutive nights, gave an average number of 568 wallabies with a density of 140 per km². As the survey site included surrounding agricultural land, it is thought the density would be higher when the wallabies retreat into the wet woodland during the day. Wallabies are now widely reported across the northern half of the Isle of Man. The
Baring family, who owned
Lambay Island off the eastern coast of Ireland, introduced red-necked wallabies to the island in the 1950s and 1960s. In the 1980s, the red-necked wallaby population at the
Dublin Zoo was growing out of control. Unable to find another zoo to take them, and unwilling to euthanize them, zoo director Peter Wilson donated seven individuals to the Barings. The animals have thrived since then and the current population is estimated to be between 30 and 50. In
France, in the southern part of the
Forest of Rambouillet, west from
Paris, there is a wild group of around 50–100 Bennett's wallabies. This population has been present since the 1970s, when some individuals escaped from the zoological park of
Émancé after a storm. In
Germany, a wild population originating from zoo escapees exists in the federated state of
Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. In October 2014, three captive Bennett's wallabies escaped into the wild in northern
Austria and one of them roamed the area for three months before being recaptured, surprisingly surviving the harsh winter there. The case attracted media attention, as it humorously defeated the popular slogan "There are no
kangaroos in Austria." ==Gallery==