The Super-cute Eastern Quoll Returns to Mainland Australia

Australia is full of cute animals—wombats, bandicoots, potoroos, echidnas, wallabies, platypuses, quokkas and koalas just to name a few. Now, Chloe Hart at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation reports we can add—or add back—to that list the eastern quoll, a little spotted marsupial.

In the last week, 20 of the cat-sized animals were flown from wildlife sanctuaries on the island of Tasmania, where they were bred, to Booderee National Park in Jervis Bay, New South Wales, about 200 miles south of Sydney. It’s hoped that the little spotted furballs will breed and increase to about 120 individuals over the next two years.

Elaina Zachos at National Georgraphic reports that the quolls were pretty common on mainland Australia until about 50 years ago. A mysterious disease wiped out a good chunk of the population and non-native foxes gobbled up the rest, wiping out the species in the 1960s. Quolls were able to survive on Tasmania, which does not have a fox population.

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By Michael Barritt & Karen May - Flickr, taken by Michael Barritt & Karen May, CC BY-SA 2.0

Eastern quoll.

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After being extinct for roughly 50 years on mainland Australia, these Eastern Quolls are making a comeback.

Rewilding Australia, with support from WWF-Australia and in collaboration with a number of partners have attempted the first wild reintroduction of eastern quolls since their mainland extinction last century.

20 eastern quolls were flown from Tasmania to Jervis Bay and released into Booderee National Park for wild reintroduction in March 2018.

 

Eastern quolls were once part of the Australian landscape for millions of years. Now they can only be found in Tasmania. WWF-Australia is working in partnership to breed and rewild the eastern quoll and bring them back to mainland Australia.