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A trail camera monitoring “feral” cats at a national park in Australia recorded the area’s first sighting of an “extremely rare” mammal.
Screengrab from New South Wales National Parks and Wildlife Service’s Facebook video
As nighttime settled across a national park in Australia, an “extremely rare” mammal with “long” feet bounded into a forest clearing and circled around a bush. Unbeknownst to it, a nearby trail camera recorded its movements.
It turned out to be a first-of-its-kind sighting for the park.
Rangers and ecologists set up trail cameras at Kosciuszko National Park for “feral cat monitoring” as part of the park’s “most expansive ecological health” survey ever, “which has involved analysing over 11 million images and vast amounts of ecological data,” the New South Wales National Parks and Wildlife Service said in an Oct. 16 Facebook post.
While sifting through the trail camera footage, officials noticed a series of photos showing a long-footed potoroo — the park’s first such sighting.
Long-footed potoroos are “rabbit-sized” marsupials with a long nose, grayish brown fur and a hairless tail, according to the New South Wales Office of Environment and Heritage. They are “extremely rare” and considered critically endangered in the state.
A video shows the long-footed potoroo moving around the forest at night, at one point almost looking directly at the trail camera.
Long-footed potoroos are “one of the rarest marsupials” in New South Wales, the state’s Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water said in an Oct. 16 Facebook post.
For almost 30 years, wildlife experts debated whether the species even lived in the state. The question was finally settled in 2023, when a trail camera at Bondi State Forest photographed one of these mammals.
That population of long-nosed potoroos is “just (about 30 miles) away from this latest sighting,” parks officials said. “Another potential population is encouraging for the species’ long-term survival, as it reduces the risk of extinction by feral predators, and by natural hazards like bushfires.”
“Following this exciting discovery,” parks officials said they “will increase targeted monitoring for long-footed potoroos” at Kosciuszko National Park “to help inform conservation efforts and park management.”
Kosciuszko National Park is in New South Wales and a roughly 310-mile drive southwest from Sydney.
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Aspen Pflughoeft
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