Australia has the worst mammal extinction rate of any continent. Here is an honest look at the species still hanging on and the conservation approaches that are producing results.
The Record
Since European settlement, Australia has lost more than 30 mammal species to extinction — a rate unmatched by any other continent over the same period. The losses include the thylacine, the toolache wallaby, the pig-footed bandicoot, and dozens of smaller species that disappeared before they were adequately studied. The cause of these extinctions is now well-established: feral cats and foxes, combined with changed fire regimes and habitat degradation, produced a predation pressure that evolved Australian small mammals had no defence against.
The species that remain from the original small-to-medium mammal fauna are concentrated in areas that still provide some refuge from introduced predators: offshore islands, predator-proof fenced sanctuaries, and the few mainland areas where landscape-scale cat and fox control programs have reduced predation pressure sufficiently for native species to persist and breed.
The Quoll
Four quoll species survive in Australia. The spotted-tail quoll (Dasyurus maculatus) — the largest — persists across parts of eastern Australia including Tasmania, where the absence of foxes and reduced feral cat pressure provides a refuge unavailable on the mainland. The eastern quoll (Dasyurus viverrinus) is extinct on the Australian mainland but maintains a viable Tasmanian population and has been reintroduced to a predator-proof enclosure in the ACT. The northern quoll (Dasyurus hallucatus) and western quoll (Dasyurus geoffroii) face ongoing pressure from cats and the cane toad.
The most promising recent development for quolls is the growing evidence that quolls can learn aversion to cane toads when exposed to nauseating but sub-lethal doses during conservation-managed conditioning programs. Northern quolls conditioned to avoid cane toads have higher survival rates in areas where the toad front is advancing. This is a conservation technique with direct field application that did not exist fifteen years ago.
The Bilby
The greater bilby (Macrotis lagotis) — the animal that has displaced the Easter bunny in Australian conservation marketing — survives in arid and semi-arid areas of Queensland, the NT, and WA. Its smaller relative, the lesser bilby, is extinct. The greater bilby's range has contracted dramatically from its historical distribution across most of arid Australia and it is listed as vulnerable.
Bilby conservation has produced some genuine success stories. The establishment of fenced bilby sanctuaries in arid areas — particularly the Arid Recovery Reserve in SA and several sites in Queensland — where both cats and foxes have been eliminated, has allowed populations to recover within enclosures to sizes that sustain insurance populations and support translocation programs. The bilbies in these sanctuaries display natural behaviours and population dynamics that are impossible to observe in captivity.
The Bandicoots
Eastern barred bandicoots (Perameles gunnii) were reduced to a single wild population in Hamilton, Victoria, before captive breeding and predator-free island and fenced-enclosure reintroductions stabilised their numbers. The species is still listed as extinct in the wild on the Australian mainland (the Hamilton population is in an unfenced area) but predator-free populations on several Victorian islands represent genuine conservation success. The restoration to a Victorian mainland site — occurring now — represents the next step.
What Works
The consistent finding across successful conservation programs for small native mammals is that cat and fox control at scale — not individual trap programs but landscape-scale suppression — combined with some form of predator exclusion, produces recovery. The tools are known. The constraint is scale and sustained funding.
Hunters contribute to this work directly. Landscape-scale fox shooting programs on private and public land suppress fox populations that would otherwise re-colonise controlled areas. Participation in pest control programs on properties adjacent to conservation areas creates buffer zones that matter. The alignment between hunting culture and conservation outcome for small mammals is not hypothetical — it is documented in the population monitoring data from the pastoral properties surrounding several major conservation reserves.
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