Once Extinct in the Wild, ‘Fit and Feisty’ Bandicoots Are Now Running Free on an Australian Island

The eastern barred bandicoot came perilously close to vanishing forever. A small, nocturnal marsupial with a striped rump and a talent for digging, it was declared extinct in the wild on the Australian mainland in 1991. By the late 1980s, the last survivors — barely 60 animals — were clinging on in an unlikely refuge: the abandoned cars of a rubbish tip in Victoria. Those few individuals were captured and became the founders of a decades-long rescue mission.

In 2026, that mission reached a triumphant new stage. Up to 100 eastern barred bandicoots were released onto Phillip Island, a populated coastal island near Melbourne — described as the largest movement of the species ever undertaken. The release was the work of the Odonata Foundation, Cesar Australia and the Eastern Barred Bandicoot Recovery Team, and was backed by a 2.5-million-Australian-dollar investment from Amazon’s Right Now Climate Fund.

“A small, nocturnal marsupial with a striped rump and a talent for digging, it was declared extinct in the wild on the Australian mainland in 1991.”

What makes this population special is the science behind it. Earlier reintroductions had been undermined by inbreeding, which produced physical defects such as an “undershot jaw” that made it hard for the animals to dig and feed. To fix that, conservationists carried out a world-first genetic rescue, breeding mainland bandicoots with Tasmanian animals — two groups that had been genetically isolated for more than 10,000 years. Careful pairings, including of females with larger males, produced animals with greater genetic diversity, more balanced sex ratios and bigger bodies.

“Through a world-first gene mixing approach, we’ve built a fit, feisty bandicoot population with far greater genetic health,” said Dr. Andrew Weeks, director of Cesar Australia. The phrase captures the mood of the project: these are not fragile animals barely surviving, but robust marsupials with a genuine fighting chance. On Phillip Island, protected from the foxes and feral cats that drove the species to the edge, the bandicoots now dig, forage and breed under the open sky — a living rebuttal to the finality of the word “extinct.”