Companions

Georgia’s Pride and Joey

Just an hour outside Atlanta, amongst the rolling tobacco, cotton and peanut fields, there lies a unique kind of nature preserve—the Kangaroo Conservation Center.

by Lynn Coulter

CALL IT THE “Atlanta Outback,” if you will, even though Dawsonville, Georgia, sits in the southern foothills of the Appalachian Mountains, and there’s nothing in this little town that resembles that famous red monolith known as Uluru (or Ayers Rock). You won’t find any blokes tossing shrimp on the barbie here, either, although you might round up a few Bubbas basting ribs on the grill.

Still, this quiet mountain community, about an hour’s drive north of Atlanta, has a lot in common with the Land Down Under, because it’s literally hopping with some of Australia’s best-known animals. Just up the road from an outlet mall packed with cookware and apparel shops, the Kangaroo Conservation Center is home to more than 300 curious, clever, fascinating kangaroos. It’s the largest collection of these beautiful marsupials outside Australia. Marsupials, of course, are critters with pouches, and just in case you’re wondering, the only native marsupial in the United States is the humble opossum.

Husband-and-wife team Roger and Debbie Nelson own and operate the center, a member of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums. Roger, a former engineer who grew up on a farm in Connecticut, and Debbie, an art historian from Florida who once worked for a zoo, met and decided to marry their mutual interests in wildlife, as well as each other, more than 20 years ago. Today their 87-acre nature preserve is open to the public for safari-style tours.

“We had a longtime interest in animals,” Debbie says, explaining the couple’s calling to work in conservation and education. While the Nelsons began by raising deer and antelope, they soon learned that kangaroos do not have good longevity and husbandry records in captivity. Further, each of the world’s 60-odd species requires specialized care and habitat. “We looked around and saw that no one else was really specializing in kangaroos,” she says. It was a niche waiting to be filled.

The Nelsons also launched a breeding program, and today most of their baby ’roos, called “joeys,” are Georgia-born. Each has a name and a unique personality. Derek, a Western Grey, is playful and inquisitive when a trainer introduces him at the center’s Wild Australia Show, but he ignores the audience to munch on a snack of pear branches. Like other joeys, he was the size of a jelly bean at birth, but he’s grown to over 6 feet, with handsome chocolate-brown fur, a black-tipped tail and dark markings on his muzzle.

After Derek bounds offstage, Sherman hops out. He’s an 8-foot 180-pounder with fur the color of Georgia’s red clay. Despite his impressive muscles, he’s rather shy and passive, and his trainer explains that kangaroos don’t really fight like boxers except to defend themselves.

Not all the kangaroos born in Dawsonville remain here. The Center ships to zoos all over the world, including Germany, Asia and South America.

Although the Nelsons stress that kangaroos are not pets, it’s clear that they’re devoted to their animals. “I love their personalities,” Roger says. “They’re fun to be around. Most people have only seen them in cartoons, and so they think they’re sort of these mythical beasts.”

Though touching isn’t allowed, visitors are invited to board the KangaRanger, a tram pulled by a diesel truck, for tours around the facility. As the tram rumbles along a dirt road, herds of kangaroos, called “mobs,” stop to watch the passing caravan. The animals’ ears swivel independently, like antennas on an old-fashioned TV, and they sit comfortably on a tripod of hind legs and tail, quiet and alert. With their strong legs, these hoppers could soar over the 8-foot fences that surround the property, but to date, there have been no reports of escapees wandering the Georgia mountains. “They don’t leave,” our tour guide says with a chuckle, “because they’ve got everything they want here.” Meanwhile, the fences also keep out coyotes, the equivalent of the kangaroos’ natural predator, the dingo.

With its staff clad in green shirts and bush hats, and its fields roamed by herds of animals, the center has a sort of Jurassic Park feel that’s reminiscent of the 1993 feature film. Eerie hoots and hollers from an exhibit of Australian blue-winged kookaburras add to the illusion.

Then again, that otherworldly feeling might not be so far off base. Scientists now think that prehistoric kangaroos, like the carnivorous dinosaurs in the movie, were pretty scary creatures. Although most modern ’roos prefer to dine on leaves, grasses, berries and flowers, their forebears, researchers say, were meat-eaters. In July 2006, paleontologists digging in Queensland, Australia, uncovered the fossilized remains of a kangaroo with long, wolflike fangs.

Still, the gentle giants living here don’t seem anything like their ferocious ancestors. Some of the nine species of kangaroos at the center aren’t even giants. Dylan, who resembles a plump rodent, is actually a brush-tailed bettong, a kangaroo that’s fully grown at 2 pounds. Cinda, a Bennetts wallaby, is an adult at just 3 feet tall. She’s docile and friendly, and her trainers joke that she’s been treated like a princess since she arrived as a baby needing bottle feeding every few hours. That royal treatment explains her official name, Cindaroolla.

Actually, all the animals here are treated royally, with special meals, stimulating toys and lots of loving care. Since the center opened for tours in 2000, the Nelsons estimate, some 50,000 visitors have come to admire their Australian wildlife, including small marsupials called sugar gliders, bearded dragon lizards, and lories and lorikeets—brilliantly colored parrots. But the stars of the nature preserve are, of course, the kangaroos. What most people probably don’t realize is that these intelligent creatures are curiously watching them back—as well as winning them over.

“I’m proud to be able to raise kangaroos,” Roger says. “We hope that visitors will see they are docile, nonthreatening animals that need to be protected in the wild and preserved for the future.”