defillama
It looks like a tiny kangaroo and it’s bouncing back from the brink of extinction
defillama
The brush-tailed bettong looks like a miniature kangaroo and, similarly, has a pouch where it keeps its young. But don’t be fooled, this small marsupial is not as adorable as it looks. When threatened by a predator, the bettong will eject its tiny joey from its pouch and bounce off in a different direction to evade capture.
Sacrificing one’s own young might seem brutal, but it’s an essential survival strategy for a species that, until recently, was extinct in South Australia’s Yorke Peninsula.
Brush-tailed bettongs (also known as woylies) once inhabited more than 60% of mainland Australia. However, the European colonization of the country brought with it predatory feral cats and foxes, and the destruction of much of the animal’s native grassland and woodland habitats.
Between 1999 and 2010, the species’ population size declined by 90% – a drastic drop that some research suggests may have resulted from the spread of blood parasites, alongside other factors. Today, the brush-tailed bettong is limited to just a few islands and isolated mainland pockets in Southwestern Australia: a mere 1% of its former range.
Marna Banggara
“We are on a mission, if you like, to bring back some of these native species that have gone missing in our landscape since European colonization,” says Derek Sandow, project manager of Marna Banggara, an initiative dedicated to restoring some of the Yorke Peninsula’s historic ecological diversity.
Formerly known as the “Great Southern Ark,” the project, which was launched in 2019 by the Northern and Yorke Landscape Board, was renamed to honor the region’s native Narungga people, who are heavily involved with the initiative.
“Marna in our language means good, prosperous, healthy, and Banggara means country,” says Garry Goldsmith, a member of the Narungga community who works on the project.