There is a baby boom of critically endangered native species happening in north-west New South Wales. For the first time in more than a century, the Pilliga scrub – the largest native forest west of the Great Dividing Range – is crawling with multiple generations of greater bilbies, bridled nailtail wallabies, brush-tailed bettong, plains mice and Shark Bay bandicoots.
“All the animals are thriving and most of the females are breeding,” says the Australian Wildlife Conservancy ecologist Vicki Stokes, who monitors the colony’s progress via camera traps and transmitters attached to their tails. “And because the bandicoots have a gestation of just 18 days and the plains mice around 30, it’s happening fast. Some of them are on their third or fourth litters already.”
