Brush-Tailed Bettongs Successfully Returning to Parts of Australia

• Brush-tailed bettongs are thriving in Southern Australia after being reintroduced in 2021. 
• These cute, kangaroo-looking marsupials have been critically endangered for many years. 
• Scientists say it could possibly be the primary profitable reintroduction of the species in Australia.

For years, brush-tailed bettongs, a critically endangered marsupial native to Australia, have lived on remoted nature reserves in Australia, however a brand new program reintroducing them again to the wild has been met with success.

Wildlife scientists a part of a conservation venture often called Marna Banggara launched almost 120 of those bettongs, additionally known as woylies, to the Dhilba Guuranda-Innes Nationwide Park in South Australia’s Yorke Peninsula, in 2021. 

Two years later, the scientists started trapping the animals — luring them in with peanut butter and oats — and found that a lot of them have been newborns, in response to a press launch from the World Wildlife Fund, indicating that the populations have been thriving within the space. 

In response to the outcomes of their monitoring of 85 bettongs, 40% of them have been newborns, in response to the discharge. Almost all of the females that they studied additionally had newborns of their pouches.

Chloe Frick, a Ph.D. candidate on the College of Adelaide, informed the Guardian that there could possibly be as much as 200 woylies within the space.

“It is surpassing everybody’s expectations,” Frick informed the Guardian.

The lovable, beady-eyed creature, which normally is not any taller than 18 inches and hops on its hind legs like a kangaroo, has been almost worn out from Southern Australia over the previous 150 years attributable to habitat loss and the introduction of feral predators like European foxes and cats by colonizers. 

As populations declined from the tens of millions to 1000’s, they might solely be present in captivity, in fastidiously managed nature preserves, or on islands free from predators. Now, within the York Peninsula experiment, there’s hope that extra of those critters will be reintroduced to the wild — if conservationists can management feral fox and cat populations within the space. 

“If this inhabitants will be sustained over time, it might be the primary profitable reintroduction of this species past islands and fenced safe-havens,” Rob Brewster, WWF-Australia’s Rewilding Venture supervisor, mentioned within the press launch.