Hundreds of native animals, locally extinct for over a century, are reclaiming their former habitat in the Australian outback thanks to an ambitious ecosystem restoration project. Bilbies, bandicoots, bettongs and quolls are now thriving in fenced enclosures designed to protect them from feral cats and foxes.
Where the dingo fence divides three states, the sun is harsh and wild dust storms are just a gust away, hundreds of new residents are settling into the desert.
The new resident is weighed and physically examined before it is set free and hops back into its warren. "They come in, they dig for their food, they dig for their shelters and they start to turn over the soil and the ecosystem and we've seen the benefits of that," Dr West said."We get more plant growth, we get water collecting in those holes and suddenly your ecosystem starts to come to life."
"Then we do the genetics and we control the breeding so that we have a really good genetic output," Andrew Elphinstone from Taronga Conservation Society Australia said."It's very hands-off. We want to promote a lot of natural behaviour so the animals are actually fit to survive in the wild.""What we think happened was the type of habitat here, even though it used to be here, was just not quite what it was expecting," Dr Kingsford said.
So far, bilbies and western quolls are roaming the wild training zone and the team is considering moving some golden bandicoots there soon.Keeping predators at bay is a never-ending task. While in the training zone they are controlled, their population outside the zone is 10 times that.
Australia Outback Ecosystem Restoration Native Animals Extinction
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