For the first time in decades the red-tailed phascogale, a threatened species, is roaming the central Australian bush after about 30 were released at Newhaven Wildlife Sanctuary's remote property this week.
The population of the evasive, nocturnal critters were bred over the last year at the Alice Springs Desert Park, after a small group were taken from the wild in Western Australia.
Joe Schofield, Australian Wildlife Conservancy's regional operations manager, said the reproduction program in Alice Springs had been a success, and it was a good time to move the animals considering their delicate breeding cycle.
"They breed once a year and you have to get the timing right within their breeding cycle, the males breed with the females and then they die pretty soon afterwards," Mr Schofield said.
"That's their one purpose in life it seems … once that's happened it's a good time to move the animals."
After the animals were flown from Alice Springs to Newhaven, about 300 kilometres north-west of the town, Mr Schofield said they were taken to a quiet area to relax for a while.
"[They were then] checked by the ecologist, [and then] carefully placed in custom-made boxes installed in the tree," he said.
The population is microchipped and will be tracked throughout their life.
"We will have a program in place to try and monitor how they go to assess the survivorship," Mr Schofield said.
Native population building
The red-tailed phascogales are the third native threatened species to be released into the property's 10,000-hectare fenced-off feral-animal-free zone.
"For the last two years we've been working towards reintroductions of what will end up being about 10 regionally extinct Australian native animals," Mr Schofield said.
So far, a population of mala and numbats have been released.
"The mala are thriving, the numbats didn't do so well — that was a trial to see how well they would do," Mr Schofield said.
"But the mala are doing really well and digging nice deep burrows to protect themselves from the environment."
Mr Schofield said golden bandicoots and burrowing bettongs were next on the list to be released.
"After that, we'll be looking at bilbies and brush-tailed bettongs, possibly the Central Australian possum," he said.
"The idea, after the numbat trial, was to get some of the animals that really alter that landscape through burrowing, then that will give the Numbats shelter from the conditions."
The long-term plan is to extend the enclosure to 100,000 hectares, which Mr Schofield said the AWC was still working towards.
