Picture this: a tiny kangaroo-like animal, soft-furred and wide-eyed, bounding across the Australian bush. But when a predator gives chase, this mother makes a shocking choice. She ejects her baby joey from her pouch, sacrificing it to create a distraction so she can escape. As brutal as it sounds, this astonishing behaviour belongs to the brush-tailed bettong, a marsupial once so close to extinction that it had disappeared from most of its homeland. Today, against all odds, this extraordinary survivor is bouncing back, and its comeback story is as wild as the animal itself.
A Creature Almost Lost Forever
The brush-tailed bettong, also called the woylie or yalgiri, once roamed more than 60 percent of mainland Australia. Barely the size of a rabbit, with a long tail and twitching nose, it scurried across the landscape like a restless gardener of the soil. Then disaster struck. From 1999 to around 2010, its population collapsed by nearly 90 percent. Scientists blamed a perfect storm of threats. Introduced predators such as foxes and feral cats decimated colonies. Habitat was destroyed. Blood-borne parasites may have also played a role.
By the early 2000s, the brush-tailed bettong clung to survival in only a tiny corner of its former range. Many experts feared it would be lost forever.
The Great Southern Rescue
In 2019, hope arrived in the form of an ambitious restoration effort on South Australia’s Yorke Peninsula. The project, first called the Great Southern Ark and later renamed Marna Banggara, set out to rewild the region and return lost species. Its new name means “good, healthy, prosperous country” in the Narungga language, recognising the Traditional Owners of the land.
Conservationists built a 25-kilometre predator-proof fence to enclose a vast 150,000-hectare safe zone at the foot of the peninsula. Within this sanctuary, bettongs were given another chance. Between 2021 and June 2023, nearly 200 animals — precisely 193 — were reintroduced, carefully sourced from different populations to maintain genetic strength.
Breeding Against the Odds
The results came quickly. In May 2023, more than 40 percent of the 85 animals captured during monitoring were locally born, proof the newcomers had settled in and were thriving. Even more remarkable, 42 of 45 mature females were carrying pouch young. Later, in November 2024, another survey found 31 of 83 bettongs caught were peninsula-born and 22 of 26 females carried babies.
After being absent for more than a century, brush-tailed bettongs were once again multiplying across the Yorke Peninsula. For a species that had nearly vanished, the sight of full pouches bursting with life became a symbol of survival.
Nature’s Little Gardeners
Beyond their survival drama, bettongs play an outsized role in healing the land. Each animal digs constantly while searching for underground fungi, bulbs, seeds, and insects. This relentless activity aerates the soil, buries seeds, improves water absorption, and helps plants grow. A single bettong can shift two to six tonnes of soil every year. Multiply that by hundreds, and you get a living workforce restoring the bush one scratch at a time.
Ecologists describe them as “nature’s little gardeners.” Farmers, too, have taken notice, since healthier soil and vegetation benefit not only wildlife but also agriculture and tourism. In saving the bettong, the project restores an entire ecosystem.
The Extraordinary Survivor
The brush-tailed bettong is not just a cute curiosity. It is a creature forged in the struggle for survival, willing to make unthinkable sacrifices when predators close in. Its return to the Yorke Peninsula after more than a century shows what can happen when science, community, and Indigenous knowledge come together.
For Australia, the revival of this small but mighty marsupial is more than a conservation success. It is proof that even on the edge of extinction, nature can rebound in surprising and extraordinary ways.
