Extinct to Endangered in 30 Years
A species declared extinct in the wild in 1991 has officially been upgraded to "endangered" after conservationists in Australia released 100 genetically rescued eastern barred bandicoots onto Phillip Island near Melbourne this past April — the largest reintroduction of the species ever att
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In the late 1980s, in a rubbish tip outside a small town in Victoria, Australia, wildlife biologists counted the last sixty animals of a species most people had never heard of, and they were almost out of time. This past April, conservationists released one hundred of that same animal into the wild in a single day, the largest release the species has ever seen. And the breakthrough that made it possible wasn't just more breeding. It was rewriting the animal's family tree.
The eastern barred bandicoot is a rabbit-sized marsupial that spends its nights digging, and that digging matters more than it sounds. Each bandicoot turns over up to three tons of soil a year, spreading seeds, aerating the ground, and helping the land hold water through drought. But by the late 1980s, habitat loss and introduced predators had pushed the species down to just sixty animals, the last of them surviving among abandoned cars at a rubbish tip in Hamilton, Victoria. Conservationists moved them into captivity to breed, and by 1991, the eastern barred bandicoot was declared extinct in the wild. Early attempts to release their captive-bred descendants failed. With such a small founding population, inbreeding had crept in, and some bandicoots developed jaw deformities so severe they struggled to dig or chew.
That's where the Odonata Foundation stepped in. Working with Cesar Australia and the Eastern Barred Bandicoot Recovery Team, scientists led by Dr. Andrew Weeks tried something no one had done before for this species. They crossbred the mainland bandicoots with a related population from Tasmania, two lineages that had been separated for more than ten thousand years. The result was a stronger, more genetically diverse bandicoot, bigger, healthier, and finally equipped to survive outside captivity.
This past April, up to one hundred of these genetically rescued bandicoots were released onto Phillip Island, a coastal island near Melbourne, in what conservationists call the largest reintroduction of the species in Australian history. The project, backed in part by a two-and-a-half-million Australian dollar investment from Amazon's Right Now Climate Fund, also credits the Eastern Maar and Bunurong Traditional Owners, whose support and deep connection to the land helped make the release possible. Researchers say they'll keep closely monitoring the population for years to come, tracking its genetics to confirm the recovery holds.
The bigger win: wildlife officials have already downlisted the eastern barred bandicoot from "extinct in the wild" to simply "endangered." That's a real change in status, not just a feel-good headline. More than two thousand bandicoots now exist across protected breeding sites, and the same genetic-rescue playbook is already being used to help save eight other Australian species that had all but vanished, from the eastern quoll to the southern brush-tailed rock-wallaby.
Extinct in the wild doesn't have to mean gone forever. Sometimes it just means the recovery hasn't started yet.
Sources: amazonau.gcs-web.com · euronews.com
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