07-07-2025
'Risky' decision to release rare Aussie creatures outside high-security fence
For a decade, a group of rare kangaroo-like marsupials have been protected behind a high-security fence. Protecting these brush-tailed bettongs at Australian Wildlife Conservancy's (AWC) 7,830-hectare Mount Gibson Wildlife Sanctuary was necessary because invasive cats and foxes have hunted them to near extinction in the wild.
A small population of the critically endangered marsupials, which are also known as woylie, were taken to the sanctuary in 2015. Without the threat of predators, they bred from 162 individuals to over 1,000 over 10 years.
This year, a decision was taken to release around 10 per cent beyond the fence. And this month a chosen few were set free across 70,000 hectares of land nearby where AWC has been reducing invasive predator numbers.
The species once occupied 60 per cent of the mainland, but today their range has plummeted to less than 1 per cent. In Western Australia's Wheatbelt, where the sanctuary is located, they haven't been seen in the wild for over a century.
Amazing photographs highlight gleeful moments woylie are released. Source: Brad Leue
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AWC's CEO Tim Allard said the plan is to re-establish locally extinct species across larger landscapes. 'While it is risky to release a predator-prone species such as the woylie into an area where cats are present, we sometimes have to take well-considered risks to advance conservation,' he said.
'We have evidence from previous releases of other species, and from monitoring the outcomes of predator control on the release site, to suggest that Woylies have a good chance of establishing outside the fence at Mt Gibson.'
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Over the next few months, ecologists will monitor the animals. Several have been fitted with tracking collars so their progress can be compared to those within the fence.
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