Members of the Gnaala Karla Booja community recently helped to relocate a locally extinct species to the South Australian Yorke Peninsula, through the Marna Banggara project.
Seventy-three brush-tailed bettongs were flown from a healthy, wild population in Dryandra National Park, and from a fenced population within Dryandra Woylie Numbat Sanctuary, to their new home in Dhilba Guuranda-Innes National Park.
Bettongs are known as yalgiri in Narungga language, and as woylies more broadly across Western Australia.
The marsupials have been extinct on Yorke Peninsula for more than a hundred years due to habitat destruction and the introduction of predatory animals – such as foxes and feral cats. However, after three previous releases of bettongs into the area from other populations, and this latest release from the Gnaala Karla Booja region, the bettongs are now breeding and thriving.
Representatives from the South Australian Narungga Nation flew to WA to meet Noongar representatives from the Gnaala Karla Booja region to carry out the ‘rewilding’ – or relocation of the marsupial.
To read more, visit the Marna Bangarra website.
Image credit: Northern and Yorke Landscape Board