Researchers with Bush Heritage Australia checked a trail camera located at Charles Darwin Reserve and saw something amazing. There, scurrying past the lens, was an animal who’d been locally extinct in the area for years.
Scientists were thrilled.
“It’s always exciting to see a species we’ve never seen before exploring our reserves,” Bush Heritage Australia senior ecologist Dr. Michelle Hall said in a press release.
The animal was a brushtail possum — a nocturnal marsupial native to Australia — and he’d traveled over 24 miles to the reserve from Mt. Gibson Wildlife Sanctuary.
Back in 2021, researchers with the Australian Wildlife Conservancy (AWC) released 49 brushtail possums into Mt. Gibson Wildlife Sanctuary, hoping the threatened species would begin to repopulate. Seeing one of these possums traveling so far is an amazing sign.
“The possum’s long and safe journey is quite significant,” a representative from AWC told The Dodo. “It affirms the importance of multiple conservation organizations working together by taking complementary approaches to protect and restore interconnected habitat. It also indicates that the possum population is on its way to becoming established at Mt. Gibson and beyond.”
Scientists will continue to monitor these animals in hopes their numbers continue to grow.
Though brushtail possums continue to face threats, including habitat loss, competition for resources, wildfires and predation, with the help of so many organizations on their side, their future is looking a bit brighter.
“Collaboration is critical because the challenge of conservation at scale is too great for one
organization alone,” Australian Wildlife Conservancy senior field ecologist Georgina Anderson said in a press release. “We need to work together.”
To support other animals like these possums, make a donation to Australian Wildlife Conservancy and make a donation to Bush Heritage Australia.