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Iconic Australian marsupial brought back from brink of extinction

Xinhua, September 1, 2016 Adjust font size:

A West Australian zoo is celebrating the birth of the 1,000th baby of an iconic marsupial species once thought to be extinct.

The Perth Zoo has been working to re-establish colonies of the Western Australia (WA) Dibbler, a small breed of marsupials only found in the state's southwest, since 1997 when habitat loss severely reduced the population. But the Dibbler breeding program faces a particular difficulty - the marsupial is only able to mate for three or four days of the year.

Zookeeper Lesley Shaw said the zoo marked the 1000-baby milestone by giving its latest Dibbler a name - Miles.

"It's always very exciting when you get to a milestone and this is certainly one of those," Shaw told the ABC on Thursday.

"Miles weighed 33 grams so he was the biggest one of the litter. Very robust little fellow."

The zoo has released 850 of the Dibblers from the program, the only one of its kind in the world, back into their natural habitat.

"They're strong and tough little creatures and they deserve a lot of credit," Shaw said. "They're very little but in the scheme of things they're a pretty big thing out there.

"They're not with us for long and that's good because they need to get back into the wild and display their natural behavior."

Cathy Lambert, supervisor of the native breeding program, said the small window of opportunity for mating was the main difficulty the program faced.

"It was really important for us to be able to work out exactly when they're supposed to be mating so we could get them together at the right time," Lambert told the ABC.

"The end goal is to do ourselves out of a job.

"That's happened with a couple of other species we've worked with in the past and we're hoping it will go the same way with the Dibblers as well." Endit