It is a significant rat. Not for its distinguished Roman nose or its cute pink feet or for anything it did in particular, but for being counted. It is now part of a data set which ANU researchers have been collecting at the same site within the park, and over 130 like it, since 2002.
They have also counted birds, bandicoots and other marsupials, reptiles, frogs, and the diversity and extent of vegetation. They are particularly interested in comparing changes in the national park between before and after fires. They have been out here, clipboard in hand, scrabbling between branches, setting and checking traps and liquid-papering marsupials’ ears, in the same places, over and over again for 15 years.
Through the accumulation of counted rats and other data, and by working closely in partnership with Parks Australia, they now know how animal populations regenerate after bushfires, they know how to best manage burn-offs, they know how to successfully reintroduce species like the southern brown bandicoot, they know about the soil, the vegetation, the pests, and the connectedness of all these things.