The Kangaroo Island dunnart, an endangered species, has been sighted after the island’s summer bushfires. 

Dunnarts are small nocturnal marsupials and although there are 19 species in Australia, the Kangaroo Island dunnart is found nowhere else in the world. 

Kangaroo Island dunnarts are sooty-grey with long tails, square ears, large black eyes and whiskers. The Red List of Threatened Species has marked the animal as critically threatened. 

Prior to the fires there were fewer than 500 dunnarts on the island. It was feared that the devastation of their natural habitat would bring this already endangered species to the brink of extinction.

But there is hope. Kangaroo Island dunnarts have been spotted using motion sensing cameras at several locations, including unburnt pockets of Flinders Chase National Park and Ravine des Casoars Wilderness Protection Area.

Heath goannas, southern-brown bandicoots and Kangaroo Island echidnas have also been recorded by these specialised cameras. A local conservation organisation called Kangaroo Island Land for Wildlife is monitoring the threatened species, along with ecologists from the National Parks and Wildlife Service South Australia.

In a rescue mission carried out by the Australian Defence Force, around 30 koalas have been safely transferred to Cleland Wildlife Park in the Adelaide Hills. 

With 210,000 hectares of the island burnt the koalas that survived the fires have struggled to find food. 

Unlike South Australia’s mainland koalas, Kangaroo Island koalas are free from diseases. The Australian Defence Force built enclosures for the rescued koalas, who are now quarantined in a disease-free environment at Cleland Wildlife Park and being nurtured back to health. 

The rescued koalas' offspring will hopefully be part of re-wilding projects in the future.