PREVIEW

Researchers in Western Australia have spotted a brushtail possum on camera, in an area where the animal was thought to be extinct.
“It’s always exciting to see a species we’ve never seen before exploring our reserves,” Senior ecologist Dr. Michelle Hall said of the discovery in a press release. “This individual possum most likely came from across the highway into the eucalypt woodlands of Charles Darwin Reserve. After 20-years under Bush Heritage’s management, the landscape is thriving and now offers many suitable habitats for native species. Hopefully this possum will find a tree hollow in the woodlands to escape ground-based predators.”
The possum scurried past a motion-sensor trail camera in Charles Darwin Reserve, previously set up by the Australian Wildlife Conservancy (AWC) to monitor feral cats in the area. When Bush Heritage Australia scientists checked the footage, they found an animal over 24 miles (38.62 km) from home.
Back in 2021, the AWC released 49 brushtail possums into Mt. Gibson Wildlife Sanctuary in the hope that the species would repopulate. While they collared and tagged some possums to track their location, this brushtail was only found by chance.
“Brushtail possums in Western Australia, they’ve contracted in range quite a lot. So they have become regionally extinct at Mount Gibson, which is about 350 kilometres northeast of Perth,” AWC former senior field ecologist Georgia Volck explained in a video interview. “So they’re found in the southwest area, which is where we are now. But by reintroducing them to Mount Gibson, we’re taking them back to where they haven’t been seen since (the) early to mid-1900s.”
Seeing an individual so far from the release site bodes well, according to the organisation.
“The possum’s long and safe journey is quite significant,” a representative told The Dodo. “It affirms the importance of multiple conservation organisations working together by taking complementary approaches to protect and restore interconnected habitat. It also indicates that the possum population is on its way to becoming established at Mt. Gibson and beyond.”
The AWC and Bush Heritage Australia are working with the Mt. Gibson Wildlife Sanctuary and the Charles Darwin Reserve to ensure these once-locally-extinct animals regain their foothold in Western Australia.
“Collaboration is critical because the challenge of conservation at scale is too great for one
organisation alone,” AWC senior ecologist Georgina Anderson asserted in a release. “We need to work together.”
Michelle agreed, “Animals don’t live in bubbles so conservation requires multiple organisations with complementary approaches working towards a shared goal of protecting and restoring interconnected habitat… The integrated pest management by both organisations in the mid-west WA plays an important role in providing a safe habitat for animals like the brushtail possum. And this sighting highlights how successful landscape-scale connectivity and collaboration can be.”
Brushtail possums are categorised into five major species, including the common brushtail possum, northern brushtail possum, short-eared possum, mountain brushtail possum, and coppery brushtail possum. Northern brushtail possums are found in the north-eastern territories of Western Australia, while other species are more commonly found in Queensland and New South Wales. Common brushtail possums are considered endemic to all regions of Australia, and are considered pests in New Zealand.