Ecologists are celebrating the first recorded sighting of a long-footed potoroo in New South Wales. The critically endangered species has never been seen in New South Wales -- despite traces of hair and scat being found in forests 30 years ago. But infrared motion sensor cameras have now captured photos of the elusive marsupial.
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00:00 They haven't been sighted in New South Wales yet until now and so a lot of effort has been
00:06 put in place and they're a bit more common in Victoria but this is the first sighting
00:10 as you said so they're quite rare in New South Wales.
00:14 So it was picked up by a motion sensor camera, we're seeing the image now.
00:18 How long had that camera been in place and was it a bit of a gamble installing it in
00:23 the first place when you didn't actually know if there were any Potoros around?
00:27 Great question, the cameras get deployed for 14 nights and they're set out to pick up a
00:32 range of species so it wasn't necessarily targeting the long footed Potoroo but we were
00:37 targeting a range of other species and obviously very very excited to find it so it was obviously
00:43 a gamble probably to try and target that particular species but we get a range of other things
00:48 as well such as Bandicoots and the other Potoroo species so yeah we're extremely excited.
00:53 Well tell us about the moment when you saw the image.
00:56 Oh look I wasn't actually the first to see it but it was extremely exciting, it was one
01:00 of those could this be, is it real and sure enough the confirmation was that it is and
01:05 very exciting and Dr Rowan Bilney our Eden Ecologist was the first to sight it and he
01:10 is over the moon with excitement at seeing the first one in New South Wales.
01:15 So what action are you going to take now that you know of this long footed Potoroo living
01:20 in the area, will there be efforts to protect them in the region?
01:25 Ah yes definitely there will be yes and already we've been part of a program to initiate further
01:31 Canberra deployments to see if we can find more and the news has spread widely amongst
01:36 other ecologist colleagues and there's a lot of excitement around the fact that we've now
01:40 been found finally and a lot of greater extra efforts have been put in place to find more.
01:44 Sadly there was a fire nearby recently and a lot of efforts went to protect that particular
01:50 habitat type in the space from this recent fire so a lot of interest and excitement.
01:55 We definitely know there's more than one and there could be a range too between here and
01:59 the Victorian border so hopefully a lot more than we're finding but at least more than
02:03 one.
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