Reporter: This is the first time a bandicoot
has stepped on Eyre Peninsula since foxes and cats caused their extinction with European settlement.
They’re settling in.
And now there’s some joeys in pouches.
John: They normally breed in winter so we're checking
them out and the other night we found a couple with little joeys in them which is
really exciting so we've got a a new generation of Secret Rocks bandicoots.
Reporter: This is their new home.
Secret Rocks is a private reserve. It’s the life’s work of Katherine Moseby and John Read.
Katherine: You get quite worried about them, particularly when you've only got
a fence keeping the cats and foxes out so it's only a small barrier and if they do
get in they could wipe the population out really quickly so we're obviously
doing a lot of checks to make sure no cats and foxes are getting in.
REPORTER They released 15 Shark Bay bandicoots
from Arid Recovery in the state’s north which they help set up 25 years ago.
Fencing is critical to species recovery.
Katherine: Really it started because calicivirus came through and decimated the rabbits and
so we decided to try and exclude rabbits from
an area permanently by putting up a fence, and then we thought "Well, if we're going to
get rid of the rabbits, we might as well get rid of the cats and foxes", and that
meant we could reintroduce a whole suite of mammal species that used to be there
but have gone extinct.
Reporter: They bought Secret Rocks to continue that work.
Katherine: We built a 900 hectare exclosure a few years ago. So that was to keep
out the herbivores but also the cats and foxes.
And we're just currently expanding that to nearly 4000 hectares, then we'll start
reintroducing more threatened species.
Reporter: They’ve invented protective measures.
Katherine: Most animals. they come straight up
to the fence and they try and dig here, which is why we have this foot netting,
and then they look up and they can't see the top of the fence because
it curves back behind them so they just run along the fence trying to find
a way in and they'll push against the fence but they very rarely understand
that they have to take a few steps back and if they do jump, because this is unstable,
they don't like, cats in particular, don't like unstable things, so they grab it and they
get unstable and they drop back. Our hope is that we can get these animals
established inside the exclosure but but then they can spread out
into the wider area.
Reporter: John’s invented something to manage cats.
John: When foxes and cats first arrived they would have taken out a whole lot of native animals
that used to be here. The little bandicoots we've just brought back they were here 150 years
ago and numbats and bilbies and rats and a whole range of different species and cats
and foxes are very good predators and the native animals are not used to predation by cats
and foxes and they were easy prey and largely wiped them out throughout most of Australia.
There were two feral cats in this area when we first built the fence
and this single Felixer knocked them both out and we haven't had any more
cats in here for the last 18 months.
The poison comes out of here and it takes a photograph here.
Reporter: They’re keeping an eye on the bandicoots.
John: We're really keen to find out how they're going.
Whether they're gaining weight and finding enough food and especially whether
they've got pouch young.
Reporter: They set traps to check on them.
Cameras detect any movement, friend or foe.
Bandicoots are nocturnal.
John: It’s not a hopping mouse.
Reporter: A camera records a rare sandhill dunnart.
Data from cameras all over Secret Rocks helps manage the feral animals.
Loss of habitat, climate and fire have all had an impact.
Katherine: Even before the bushfire, the big drought
and the heatwaves were really knocking around a lot of our native species. We had
a mass die-off of birds and even mallee fowl were dying in the drought, in the heat waves,
and then on top of that we've had the wildfires. And of course for the first
eight months we didn't get any rain, so it was just sand blowing
everywhere and any seedlings that did come up were just covered in sand.
John: We're fencing this larger area and we hope to
bring back, well we plan to bring back, numbats which are really cool little animals and really
rare. They're rarer than pandas so it's really important that we
look after them. It's all very well to devote lots of attention
to looking after pandas but our own Australia wildlife are equally as rare and
threatened.
Reporter: They’re hopeful they’ll see bandicoot joeys hopping and scratching around soon.
And numbats next year and phascogales the next.