One giant leap for bettongs released into sanctuary as wildlife conservancy aims to operate on 5% of Australia

The ‘ecosystem engineers’ will roam a cat and fox free former sheep farm and help spread seeds and improve soils with their digging

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Like a ball of fur mounted on a spring, they leapt into the crisp night air and on to a landscape of acacia scrub where they hadn’t roamed free for maybe a 100 years or more.

The Australian Wildlife Conservancy (AWC) last month released 147 of the brush-tailed bettongs on to its sanctuary at Mount Gibson, about a four-hour drive northeast of Perth on the edge of the wheat belt.

“When we open the bag, their first thought is just ‘we’re outa here’,” says Dr Bryony Palmer, a wildlife ecologist at the conservancy.