Golden Bandicoot Numbers Triple to About 300 at Newhaven Wildlife Sanctuary

NEWHAVEN WILDLIFE SANCTUARY, Northern Territory - Threatened golden bandicoots have roughly tripled inside a feral-predator-free refuge in Central Australia, with Australian Wildlife Conservancy ecologists now estimating about 300 animals where 80 were reintroduced two and a half years earlier, according to an AWC press release dated 20 January 2026.

The population lives inside a 9,450-hectare fenced area at Newhaven Wildlife Sanctuary, on Ngalia-Warlpiri and Luritja Country in the Red Centre northwest of Alice Springs. Dr Tim Henderson and colleagues reported that motion-sensor cameras detected bandicoots on about 8 percent of cameras in September 2023, one month after release, and on more than 60 percent by September 2025. In a recent survey, the team captured 99 individuals, 92 of them born at the sanctuary, and said every female caught had pouch young or showed signs of recent breeding.

Once among the most common small mammals of Australia's arid zone and an important food for First Nations Peoples, the golden bandicoot is now listed as Vulnerable. Remnant mainland populations persist mainly in a few northwest Kimberley locations after the species vanished from about 95 percent of its former range, a decline AWC attributes chiefly to predation by feral cats and foxes, compounded by grazing and altered fire regimes after colonisation. In Central Australia the animal had been extinct for roughly 60 years until August 2023.

That month, the Ngarinyin People, Traditional Custodians of Wilinggin Country in the Kimberley, including AWC's Charnley River - Artesian Range Wildlife Sanctuary, gifted a founding group of 40 bandicoots to the Traditional Custodians of Watakinpirri Country on Newhaven. AWC's Newhaven monitoring materials describe a total founding release of 80 animals drawn from Charnley River and Barrow Island sources. ABC News, reporting on 7 February 2026, quoted Dr Henderson on strong rainfall years after translocation and on a roughly 44-kilometre fence that excludes cats and dingoes from the refuge.

"This kind of growth is exactly what happens to species such as the Golden Bandicoot, when they finally get a break from the pressures of being hunted by cats," Dr Henderson said in the AWC release. "Bandicoots breed fast, they mature early, and they can have multiple young per year, under favourable conditions." He added that bringing the species back into a feral-predator-free environment had allowed its natural rate of increase to resume. ABC's Victoria Ellis and Nat Tencic reported that golden bandicoots weigh about 300 grams and were the seventh species reintroduced at Newhaven.

Bandicoots dig as they forage, turning soil and promoting seed growth, a role Dr Henderson described to ABC as restoring an ecological process missing from the landscape for decades. AWC said the Newhaven animals have expanded their range inside the fence with high breeding activity and strong survival, and that the population could, over time, grow into the thousands if conditions hold. The organisation frames the project within a wider reintroduction program that aims, over the next decade, to expand protection for threatened wildlife vulnerable to introduced predators from 20 to 30 species.

The primary public record remains AWC's 20 January 2026 press release, with ABC Alice Springs coverage on 7 February 2026 as a secondary account that includes additional colour from Dr Henderson on rainfall, fence length and the animals' size. AWC field photographs credited to Tim Henderson and Sam Mulvena appear on the press page but are not cleared for republication here. The museum mounts and arid-landscape images used above are Wikimedia Commons files chosen for species and habitat context only.