burned to, just up around here. then it left these little patches of unburnt vegetation here, so we re literally right on the edge where fire stopped. kangaroo island wildlife researcher pat hodgins remembers the fear which gripped him in the days which followed. it was pretty clear to us that the impacts for threatened species on the island was going to be pretty massive. if you see just the fire ripping through the habitat and taking everything away, it s like a massive habitat loss, just like that, the click of a heartbeat, really. the ki dunnart is pretty distinctive. it runs along here, in front of this camera trap, and the camera will detect the movement and then take a series of photos.
miraculously, we had found kangaroo island dunnarts that had persisted here, which was fantastic, and also a whole host of other threatened species like southern brown bandicoots, which are endangered, southern emu wrens and western whipbirds. so that was amazing, to know they d persisted in this location. with that tiny success, a rescue plan was hatched to secure remaining populations, and within months, the western river refuge was created almost 400 hectares of habitat protected with a cat exclusion fence that ecologists hope will become a sanctuary for the dunnarts and other species. because of that effort and because of the funding and the resources that have gone into the kangaroo island
and this was what worried him the most. the fate of the endangered kangaroo island dunnart, a tiny marsupial. when you have species like the kangaroo island dunnart, that s only found here, there are none on mainland australia, none on any other islands, none in captivity, and they only live in this really small location if you have a fire that comes through and takes them all out, takes out the habitat, you don t really know how that species is going to respond. so we were obviously pretty concerned there was going to be some pretty major impacts for that species. with predators on the prowl, teams worked quickly to create safe havens for any remaining ground species, setting up simple contraptions like these netted tunnels, where animals could hide. nearby, drift nets were placed with cameras attached to help identify anything moving on the surface. within a couple of days,
persisted in this location. with that tiny success, a rescue plan was hatched to secure remaining populations, and within months, the western river refuge was created almost 400 hectares of habitat protected with a cat exclusion fence that ecologists hope will become a sanctuary for the dunnarts and other species. because of that effort and because of the funding and the resources that have gone into the kangaroo island dunnart, we know more about the dunnart than ever, because of the bushfire, which i guess is a bit of a silver lining. and what we ve seen from that is that we have found dunnarts in a lot more locations than we previously have. and it s notjust dunnarts which have survived. this is a possum, a brushtail possum.
kangaroo island wildlife researcher pat hodgins remembers the fear which gripped him in the days which followed. it was pretty clear to us that the impacts for threatened species on the island was going to be pretty massive. if you see just the fire ripping through the habitat and taking everything away, it s like a massive habitat loss, just like that, the click of a heartbeat, really. the ki dunnart is pretty distinctive. it runs along here, in front of this camera trap, and the camera will detect the movement and then take a series of photos. and this was what worried him the most. the fate of the endangered kangaroo island dunnart, a tiny marsupial. when you have species like the kangaroo island dunnart, that s only found here, there are none on mainland australia, none on any other islands, none in captivity, and they only live