UNSW
Platypuses on Kangaroo Island may be on the road to recovery following the devastation of the 2019-2020 bushfires, a team including researchers from UNSW have found.
The researchers spent a week setting traps in the isolated Rocky River area of Flinders Chase National Park in late May to assess the species’ condition and population growth and trapped healthy juvenile and adult platypuses.
“The impacts of the fires were quite apparent as we were carrying out the surveys for platypuses,” Dr Gilad Bino from the Platypus Conservation Initiative in the Centre for Ecosystem Science, at UNSW Sydney’s School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences.