It’s fair to say that the island’s wallaby population divides opinion, with a great many people believing that they are a harmless feature of the Manx countryside that enhances its biodiversity, whilst others disagree.

Conservationists worry that the animals nibble at young saplings hampering re-forestation, and that they eat rare plant species; naturalists warn that that they may disturb ground-nesting birds or spread toxoplasmosis (a serious parasitic infection); and farmers are unhappy about damaged fences and overgrazed land.

It seems that we’re not alone in this polarised position, and that wallabies are popping (or hopping) up all over England and Wales causing much debate.

It’s thought that the origins of wallabies in England are similar to the Manx population’s – namely that escapees from a private collection have survived, and bred, in the wild.

Wallabies were initially only spotted in the UK in the Peak District, where nature has since taken its toll and that population is believed to have succumbed to a particularly harsh winter in 2010.

Wallabies, don’t forget, are native to Australia and are cousins of the kangaroo, and so they are not lovers of a cold climate. UK wallaby sightings have since moved south, in line with milder weather conditions, and recent data indicates clusters in places such as Lancashire, north Wales and Nottingham, down as far as Norfolk and Cornwall.

Warmer winters are undoubtedly making life easier for wallabies, and so too is much of England and Wales’s countryside. There is plenty of scrubland, woodland and uncultivated farmland for them to feed on and few, if any, natural predators.

There is also a trend, not unlike the one for alpacas, for keeping wallabies as exotic additions to smallholdings, and a proportion of these animals will undoubtedly escape.

These escapees keep adding to the wild population and, importantly, they will add more genetic diversity to the gene pool – ultimately strengthening the health of the species.

The Manx wallabies do have health issues, such as blindness and neurological problems, that are most likely to be due to in-breeding (although lack of certain vitamins in their diet may also be a factor).

But their population is thought to still be growing and it has been estimated that there may be as many as 1,200 – one of the largest populations outside Australia (where, ironically, the wallaby population is on the decline).

The MSPCA was called out to rescue a young male wallaby in Sulby last week.

He showed no signs of significant injury, but he was obviously very sick and in distress, and was probably suffering from extreme toxic shock.

We managed to get the poor animal to a vet fairly quickly and he was put to sleep to end his suffering.

The sad reality of rescuing adult wild animals is that they are usually mortally sick or injured otherwise they wouldn’t let a human get near them (unless they’re simply trapped in fencing, for example, and need to be released).

The island’s wallaby population isn’t classed a ‘wildlife’ under Manx law.

They are a named Invasive Non-Native Species (INNS) and they are viewed as ‘a problem in their new environment, whether through rapid and extensive spread, outcompeting or damaging native species, or even affecting human activities’ (www.gov.im).

This means they are not protected by The Wildlife Act 1990, and they can be hunted and shot legally.

But what native species is the wallaby population affecting? As vegetarians, wallabies do not predate smaller animals or disrupt the food-chain – in fact, they are a benign presence amongst wildlife species.

And as to them eating rare flora and fauna, there is no evidence to suggest that the wallaby diet differs from that of other vegetarians such as rabbits and sheep.

We believe that the only way forward is for there to be a government-funded, independently peer-reviewed, research project into the impact wallabies have on the island’s environment.

We are confident that the project will conclude that the wallabies are not a threat to the Manx environment, and that they should be viewed as an asset – even a tourist attraction.