Hidden within the tropical rainforests of North Queensland lives one of Australia’s most elusive marsupial predators — the northern spotted-tailed quoll (Dasyurus maculatus gracilis).
The northern subspecies of the spotted-tailed quoll, it is restricted to North Queensland and is listed as Endangered. A powerful and highly mobile predator, it occupies rainforest and adjoining forest habitats across the Wet Tropics, where much of its remaining habitat is protected within National Parks and the Wet Tropics World Heritage Area.
Primarily nocturnal and largely solitary, these quolls spend their days sheltering in dens before emerging after dark to hunt and move through their territories. Their spotted coats make individuals recognisable, allowing remote cameras to follow known animals through successive seasons without the need to capture or disturb them.
For more than 12 years, the Australian Quoll Conservancy has used non-invasive monitoring to study these animals in the wild. Long-term observations have provided a rare window into their breeding, motherhood, movements, individual territories and the emergence of new generations across North Queensland’s tropical forests.
That fieldwork has also become the foundation of our filmmaking.
A story with hunters, told by hunters.
Eleven years after the Australian broadcast of Quolls: Fast & Furious, I’m proud to introduce the next chapter — Quollity Breeding, premiering soon on Australian television. CINEMATIC TEASER (60 sec)
This film is more than a sequel.
It represents more than a decade of persistence in the field, thousands of hours of observation and remote-camera monitoring, and the development of non-invasive research methods designed to study spotted-tailed quolls while allowing them to remain wild and undisturbed.
For the Australian Quoll Conservancy and WildCAM Australia®, those years have revealed extraordinary insights into breeding, motherhood, movement and the lives of a new generation of spotted-tailed quolls in North Queensland’s Wet Tropics.
Much has changed since our first film.
Our commitment to these animals has not.
Eleven years. Two films. One continuing story of survival.
Alberto Vale
Alberto Vale is an award-winning wildlife filmmaker, cinematographer, naturalist and citizen scientist based in Cairns, North Queensland, at the gateway to the Wet Tropics World Heritage Area. For more than two decades, Alberto has combined wildlife cinematography with an intimate knowledge of tropical habitats, guided by a simple principle: to film wildlife successfully, you must first understand its habitat and behaviour. As founder and President of the Australian Quoll Conservancy (AQC), he has spent more than a decade conducting non-invasive field research on the endangered northern spotted-tailed quoll, developing non-invasive techniques to identify and monitor individual animals, breeding and behaviour without conventional trapping. Through WildCAM Australia®, Alberto has produced and directed internationally broadcast natural-history documentaries, including Green Tree Ants – Friend or Foe?, Quolls: Fast & Furious, and his latest production, Quollity Breeding, narrated by veteran Australian voice-over artist Katherine Kennard. Today, Alberto continues to combine cinematography, natural history and citizen science, using the camera not simply to capture wildlife, but to reveal behaviour, contribute to conservation knowledge and bring the hidden lives of Australia's native species to audiences worldwide.
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