Conservation authorities in Australia say they’ve successfully released a group of endangered eastern quolls to the wild.
The animals were bred and raised at the Barrington Wildlife Sanctuary, a protected zone managed by the organization Aussie Ark.
Quolls are small, ground-dwelling, nocturnal marsupials endemic to Australia and parts of the island of New Guinea. Eastern quolls were extirpated from Australia’s east coast by the 1960s. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) classifies the species as endangered on its famous Red List.
Scientists at Aussie Ark and the University of Sydney said they took 15 captive-bred adult eastern quolls from the refuge and released them to a protected piece of property near the community of Nowra. Indigenous Australian’s participated in the project.
They said the release is a major milestone and turning point in efforts to revitalized a species that had almost been driven to extinction.
“It is the first time the eastern quoll has been released on this site,” they said, “a significant step towards rewilding for a species is otherwise extinct on mainland Australia.”
The release location is described as a “68-hectare feral-proof site” where the eastern quolls can survive under conservationists’ surveillance and free from the threat of most predators.
The quolls were fitted with GPS tracking devices. Meanwhile, 54 camera traps set up in the release site will help scientists monitor the animals’ progress.
“This long-term research project provides us with a wonderful opportunity not only to establish a meta-population of eastern quolls on mainland Australia but also deep-dive into the ecology of the species,” University of Sydney Associate Professor Newsome said in a summary of the project.
The team says the new eastern quoll wild release site, called Bannockburn, will join a network of similar of quoll sanctuaries managed to revitalize the species while conservationists monitor the population’s environmental and genetic health.
Park Info
Park:
Barrington Wildlife Sanctuary
Location:
New South Wales, Australia
More Information:
