The conservation population of Australia’s endangered eastern quoll welcomes joeys

The eastern quoll, once so common in Australia it was kept as a pet, vanished from the mainland by the 1960s due to disease, habitat loss, and predation by cats, dogs, and foxes. It survives today only in Tasmania, where a 2023 study found populations dwindling sharply since 2000 despite the island's lack of foxes. Conservationists blame cats directly for quoll deaths in recent reintroduction efforts.

A 2020 release of 20 captive-bred adult quolls at Silver Plains failed entirely to produce surviving offspring, according to genetic testing, likely because the adults lacked wild reproductive experience. A revised approach mixing adults and juveniles, tried at The Quoin conservation property in 2025, has now produced quolls that reproduced successfully in the wild. Mainland reintroduction remains far less successful than the Tasmanian efforts.

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