Eastern Barred Bandicoots x Zoos Victoria

ENDANGERED SPECIES

Wildlife Drones was deployed by Zoos Victoria in a trial project tracking captive-bred Eastern Barred Bandicoots that were tagged and released into the wild, alongside Guardian Dogs to help keep them safe.

These ground-dwelling marsupials were once widespread across the grasslands of western Victoria and South Australia. However, predation from invasive species and habitat loss has resulted in their sharp decline and extinction from mainland Australia. Thankfully, a successful recovery program that includes captive breeding of these unique marsupials and releasing them back into the wild, is now bringing the species back.

To help re-establish the mainland population, the Guardian Dog program aimed to trial whether bandicoots could form self-sustaining populations in fields where specially trained Maremma sheepdogs were protecting small herds of sheep. The idea was that the presence of these “guardian dogs” would help deter foxes from the area, thus giving the bandicoots a fighting chance at surviving in the wild.

Both the tagged bandicoots and the guardian dogs were both reading detected, with the detection dogs having a longer detection range sure to their larger and more powerful tags.

Zoos Victoria are now using Wildlife Drones technology to regularly monitor a diversity of endangered species released back into the wild across the state of Victoria.