After 40 Years of Work, Australia’s Numbat Steps Back From the Brink

Few animals are as distinctive — or as easily overlooked — as the numbat. A small, day-active marsupial with reddish-brown fur, bold white stripes across its back and a long sticky tongue built for eating termites, it is the faunal emblem of Western Australia. For much of the past century, though, it was also a species in freefall, and by the late 1970s only around 300 numbats were thought to remain in the wild.

In 2026, more than four decades of patient conservation earned formal recognition when the numbat was downlisted on the IUCN Red List from Endangered to Near Threatened. The population is now estimated at 2,000 to 3,000 animals — a modest number in absolute terms, but a substantial climb for a species that had come so close to disappearing. “The ‘downlisting’ of the numbat on the IUCN Red List from Endangered to Near Threatened is what we have been working for over the last 40 years!” said Tony Friend, a research associate with Western Australia’s Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions.

“A small, day-active marsupial with reddish-brown fur, bold white stripes across its back and a long sticky tongue built for eating termites, it is the faunal emblem of Western Australia.”

The numbat’s decline was driven above all by introduced predators — red foxes and feral cats — compounded by habitat loss and changes in fire regimes. The recovery has hinged on controlling those predators and establishing safe strongholds. Today there are five secure populations spread across southern Australia, three in Western Australia and one each in South Australia and New South Wales, ranging in size from a few dozen animals to as many as 150–200. The oldest of these has persisted for more than 30 years, supported by organisations including the DBCA and Perth Zoo.

Conservationists were quick to add a note of caution. Near Threatened is a step in the right direction, not a finish line, and Friend warned that the gains depend entirely on continued predator control — without it, the numbat’s numbers could fall again quickly. But for now, the story is one to savour: a shy, termite-eating marsupial that most of the world has never seen has been nudged back from the edge by decades of quiet, determined effort, proving that even the least famous animals are worth fighting for.