It's bizarre. I can think of at least 3 scientific publications that predict (i.e., model) the uncontrolled explosion of deer across Tas. None of them were referred to in the report. weirdddd

The City of Platypuses!!

Harry, why is your dog stealing quoll food!?

Should note that the devils can, & do, extract themselves from this situation perfectly well. There’s no denying them food…

I am here for the Captain Quoll rebrand!!

That’s a funky looking EQ - its vibe is all wrong!

Whoops, sorry - that wasn't meant to be the take-home! The captive-bred quolls did great, we just have to refine methods in terms of which individuals are released to help them with breeding. So a focus on juveniles & adults who have bred previously in future, which is exactly what we're doing ☺️

This work was the result of a great collaboration between @tasland.bsky.social, @utas.edu.au, WWF Australia and the Tasmanian Quoll Conservation Program (made up in part by Bonorong Wildlife Sanctuary, Devils@Cradle, East Coast Nature World & Trowunna Wildlife Sanctuary)

Another interesting side finding was the first (that we know of) genetic confirmation of multiple paternity in eastern quolls, with multiple litters found to have been fathered by more than one male quoll!

Useful lessons to be learned from this for future translocations of this species, with a key one being around releasing reproductively naive adult quolls. They were able to survive well in the environment, but may not have been able to translate that to breeding success.

However, genetic analysis of the next generation found no evidence that any of them had a captive-bred parent!

While we may have missed some juveniles in our sampling, this (at the least) indicates that the captive-bred quolls had lower breeding success than their wild counterparts

We also wanted to examine the genetic effects of the supplementation, so sampled the next generation of quolls post-release.

This was a key part of an Honour's project by Jessica Morrison, who's the lead author on the study