It looks like a tiny kangaroo and it’s bouncing back from the brink of extinction

Editor’s Note: Call to Earth is a CNN editorial series committed to reporting on the environmental challenges facing our planet, together with the solutions. Rolex’s Perpetual Planet initiative has partnered with CNN to drive awareness and education around key sustainability issues and to inspire positive action.

The brush-tailed bettong looks like a miniature kangaroo and, similarly, has a pouch where it keeps its young. But don’t be fooled, this small marsupial is not as adorable as it looks. When threatened by a predator, the bettong will eject its tiny joey from its pouch and bounce off in a different direction to evade capture.

Sacrificing one’s own young might seem brutal, but it’s an essential survival strategy for a species that, until recently, was extinct in South Australia’s Yorke Peninsula.

Brush-tailed bettongs (also known as woylies) once inhabited more than 60% of mainland Australia. However, the European colonization of the country brought with it predatory feral cats and foxes, and the destruction of much of the animal’s native grassland and woodland habitats.

Between 1999 and 2010, the species’ population size declined by 90% – a drastic drop that some research suggests may have resulted from the spread of blood parasites, alongside other factors. Today, the brush-tailed bettong is limited to just a few islands and isolated mainland pockets in Southwestern Australia: a mere 1% of its former range.

Marna Banggara

“We are on a mission, if you like, to bring back some of these native species that have gone missing in our landscape since European colonization,” says Derek Sandow, project manager of Marna Banggara, an initiative dedicated to restoring some of the Yorke Peninsula’s historic ecological diversity.

Formerly known as the “Great Southern Ark,” the project, which was launched in 2019 by the Northern and Yorke Landscape Board, was renamed to honor the region’s native Narungga people, who are heavily involved with the initiative.

“Marna in our language means good, prosperous, healthy, and Banggara means country,” says Garry Goldsmith, a member of the Narungga community who works on the project.

The team initially erected a 25-kilometer predator-control fence across the narrow part of the Yorke Peninsula to create a 150,000-hectare safe haven for the first species to be brought back: the brush-tailed bettong, known as yalgiri to the Narungga people. “We’ve reduced fox and cat impacts to a level that’s low enough for these yalgiri to be reintroduced and for them to actually find refuges, find food, and to survive themselves,” says Sandow.

Between 2021 and 2023, the team introduced almost 200 brush-tailed bettongs to the protected area. Sourcing these individuals from various remaining populations across Western Australia helped to “increase the genetic pool,” says Goldsmith.

Sandow adds that boosting species diversity is important as these individuals “hold the genetic footprint for the future of the species here.”

Ecosystem engineers

Brush-tailed bettongs feed on bulbs, seeds and insects, but their primary food source is fungi growing underground; to find it, they must dig. “They’re nature’s little gardeners,” says Sandow, “a single yalgiri can turn over two to six tons of soil per year.”

That’s why they’re the first species being reintroduced to the region, he says. All this digging aerates the soil, improves water filtration and helps seedlings germinate – benefitting other animals that rely on the ecosystem.

So far, the reintroduction program is “probably even exceeding expectations,” says Sandow. Almost 40% of the individuals captured in a recent monitoring survey were descendants of those originally introduced to the area and 22 of the 26 females were carrying pouch young. This means that “they’re breeding and healthy,” he says.

“The really important part of this is to learn from the process,” says Goldsmith. If all goes to plan, the team hopes to return more locally extinct species to the region over the next few years, including other marsupials like the southern brown bandicoot, red-tailed phascogale and western quoll.

Sandow insists that improving the region’s ecosystem through species reintroductions and predator control can also have positive knock-on effects on industries such as tourism. “It can benefit local businesses, it can benefit local agriculture, it can provide those conservation benefits,” he says. “It doesn’t have to be mutually exclusive.”

Sign up for CNN’s Wonder Theory science newsletter. Explore the universe with news on fascinating discoveries, scientific advancements and more.

For more CNN news and newsletters create an account at CNN.com