These Eastern Quoll Babies Are The First To Be Born In The Wild On The Australian Mainland In Over 50 Years

    They look like jellybeans and this is very important.

    A new breeding program has just succeeded in producing the first eastern quoll joeys born in the wild on the Australian mainland in over 50 years.

    In March of this year, 20 eastern quolls were transferred from a Tasmanian wildlife sanctuary to Booderee National Park south of Jervis Bay in New South Wales.

    In the past, the quolls were distributed throughout the south-east of Australia across NSW, Victoria, South Australia, and Tasmania but they were driven to extinction on the mainland by predators such as foxes and feral cats.

    The last eastern quoll sighting on the mainland was in Vaucluse in the 1960s.

    Three of the females from the program are now confirmed to have five pouch young each, all of which are currently the size of a baked bean.

    The species is still common in Tasmania but studies have shown that even this population was reduced by more than 50% between 1999 and 2009, leaving around 10,000 quolls on the island.

    The eastern quoll is listed as an endangered species by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

    The reintroduction program is a collaborative effort between Parks Australia, WWF, ANU, and Rewilding Australia and will continue for another two years, with plans for more quolls to arrive in Booderee National Park in March or April of next year.

    The program follows a 15-year long effort by Booderee National Park to reduce fox numbers through baiting.

    Booderee National Park natural resource manager Nick Dexter told BuzzFeed News that the plan is now to reduce fox numbers throughout the Jervis Bay area and create a sustainable wild quoll population.

    However, this is still a tricky proposal, as the quolls have a high mortality rate in the wild due to predators and have a natural lifespan (when uninterrupted) of only two to three years.

    "We anticipate that we're going to lose a few because there's no way around that. So the more we have, the better chance we have of a population being established," said Dexter.

    WWF Australia's Head of Living Ecosystems, Darren Grover, said that this year's joeys are a promising start to the three-year program.

    "They give us hope that there is a future for these feisty little marsupials back on the mainland where they belong."

    Dexter is now hoping that the program can expand out of Booderee after the population has been established in the national park and spread throughout the Jervis Bay region.