A young couple are braving danger and isolation in one of the most remote areas of Australia to help turn around the country's extinction crisis.
UNSW-Sydney ecologists Dr Rebecca West and her husband Dr Reece Pedler run the Wild Deserts project in the Sturt National Park — an ambitious 10-year collaboration to re-introduce seven locally extinct animals into safe havens and restore the health of the desert into the bargain.
But when they embarked on the project, they couldn’t know all the challenges they would face — years of crippling drought meant conditions weren't right to bring in native animals.
But in 2020 the rains finally came and with it, the first 10 bilbies bred at Taronga Park Western Plains Zoo in Dubbo were released and are now thriving in their new home.
With Australia's extinction crisis among the worst in the world, re-populating the desert with the animals that once thrived there is a ray of hope in a race against time.
