The mala, a tiny marsupial, is making a comeback in the Australian outback. Once thought to be extinct, this diminutive creature is being reintroduced to the wild in the very regions where indigenous people believe it first appeared on Earth.
Australia has the world's worst mammal extinction rate. Since European settlement 250 years ago, introduced predators like cats and foxes have ravaged the country's wildlife. A staggering 34 Australian mammals have vanished since colonization, with the greatest losses occurring in the Great Sandy Desert.
Places once teeming with bilbies, bettongs, bandicoots, possums, and wallabies now contain only abandoned burrows.Early explorers like Ludwig Leichhardt described these animals as being present in almost epidemic numbers in the 19th century; his expedition relied heavily on bettongs for food as they traversed northern Australia.
Newhaven Wildlife Reserve in the heart of Australia is home to a variety of ecosystems, from red desert outcrops, salt lakes, and grasslands to sand dunes, desert oak woodlands, and a rich array of insects and reptiles. Yet, mammals are scarce.
It was in the Newhaven area that the mala was first discovered, literally popping out of the ground. The mainland subspecies of the rufous hare-wallaby, the mala (Lagorchestes hirsutus) weighs just over a kilogram, rarely grows larger than 60 centimeters from nose to tail, and resembles a miniature kangaroo. With its dashing white whiskers, fluffy reddish fur with silvery highlights, and sandy-colored tail, it is a solitary and nocturnal creature that seeks shelter from the desert sun in shallow burrows, emerging after dark to feed on leaves and desert grasses. When startled, it leaps from its burrow and dashes away in frantic zigzags.
From its emergence until the mid-20th century, the mala inhabited the interior of Australia, facing few threats beyond natural predators like dingoes or occasional wildfires. Indigenous people, who moved across the landscape and regularly lit fires, had coexisted with the mala for millennia. Many local plants and animals adapted to this fire regime. When the Warlpiri people and others were displaced from their lands, summer fires raged out of control, destroying everything in their path.
By the 1970s, only two isolated mala populations remained. In 1980, five wild mala were captured for a captive breeding program at Alice Springs Desert Park. Some were later released into the wild but were quickly eaten by cats and foxes. In 1986, a predator-free "mala enclosure" of one square kilometer was created in a remote corner of the Tanami Desert.Surrounded by an electric fence, it protected a population. But foxes, cats, and wildfires killed the last wild mala, and the species was officially declared extinct in the wild. Only captive-bred animals remained in various enclosures across inland Australia.
Now, they are being released back into the wild – into a 94.5-square-kilometer fenced enclosure in Newhaven. The first individuals were released in 2018, making it the largest such enclosure in Australia. Golden bandicoots, burrowing bettongs, and bilbies have also been moved to the site.
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