Conservationists are celebrating the birth of seven Tasmanian devil joeys on the Australian mainland, a milestone in rewilding the species.
Australia is experiencing a very unique baby boom. Tasmanian devils have just been born in the wild on the continent’s mainland for the first time since they disappeared there about 3,000 years ago. Last year,26 of the adult carnivorous marsupials into a sanctuary at Barrington Tops, north of Sydney. It marked the first step in their attempt to establish a sustainable population of the endangered species, which has been decimated by illness in its remaining habitat on the island of Tasmania. They hoped their efforts, over a decade in the making, would achieve similar success as the National Park in the United States in the 1990s. “There’s so much at stake here. We’ve done everything we can, but if the devils don’t breed, it’s all over,” conservation group Aussie Ark president Tim Faulkner said in a statement.
