Australia is not the only place in the world where wallabies live in the wild. On the Isle of Man, a small island in the Irish Sea, an estimated population of more than 1,000 red-necked wallabies now roams free, decades after a handful of animals escaped from a wildlife park.
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The story begins in 1965, when Curraghs Wildlife Park opened in the north of the island. According to local accounts, a wallaby named Wanda escaped during the park’s first year, wandered the countryside for twelve months, and eventually returned on her own. More wallabies got loose over the following decades, including a group of eight that dug their way out of their enclosure in 1989.
Red-necked wallabies are native to eastern Australia and Tasmania, but they adapted well to the Isle of Man’s cooler, wetter climate, which is not too different from parts of Tasmania. Most of the population settled in the Ballaugh Curragh, a boggy wetland in the island’s northwest that is internationally protected under the Ramsar Convention and recognised as an Area of Special Scientific Interest.
For years, nobody knew exactly how many wallabies were living there. A drone survey using thermal imaging, commissioned by the Manx Wildlife Trust in 2024, eventually put the number at well over a thousand, spread across the north of the island.
That growth has divided opinion locally. Releasing a wallaby into the wild is an offence under the island’s Wildlife Act. But the wild population itself has no such protection, since wallabies are classed as an invasive non-native species, not protected wildlife.
The Manx Wildlife Trust warns that their grazing is stripping rare plants from the protected wetland. A nearby roost once used by hundreds of wintering birds has emptied out since the wallabies moved in.
There have also been a string of road accidents caused by drivers swerving to avoid them, a particular worry near the TT motorcycle circuit. Suggestions for managing the population range from culling to sterilisation, though many islanders remain fond of an animal now woven into local culture and tourism.
For now, the wallabies remain a genuine oddity of Manx wildlife, on an island that has become an unlikely outpost for one of Australia’s best-known animals. It’s one more addition to a list of local curiosities that already includes the tailless Manx cat.