Eastern Bettong
Bettongia giamardi
Habitat Dry forest and grasslands
IUCN Status Near Threatened
Named Balbo or Ngaluda in Ngunnawal language, the Eastern Bettong is a remarkable little macropod and ecosystem engineer. Through daily habits of existence, they impact their surrounding environment by dispersing the spores of the truffles that they eat, turning and renewing soil, and leaving diggings in which native plants can germinate and grow.
Being nocturnal, bettongs like to sleep during the day in round nests built with grasses and dead bark. They collect and transport nesting material by bundling it up in their semi-prehensile tail.
The Eastern Bettong was driven to extinction on the mainland for almost 100 years by foxes, feral cats, and bounties placed on them by angry farmers, whose potatoes they would dig up and eat. Starting in 2012 they have been successfully reintroduced into Mulligans Flat, where their population has exploded to well over 100 individuals.
Photograph by Raw Shorty