Did you know: The Numbat's Long Climb Off the Endangered List

From 300 to 3,000

Australia's numbat is one of the country's quiet conservation success stories, but its recovery is more fragile than it looks. This month, the species moved from Endangered to Near Threatened on the IUCN Red List — a global reassessment reflecting more than 40 years of conservation work. Yet under Australia's own domestic law, the numbat is still listed as Endangered. That gap between the global and local picture is the clearest signal that this is a partial win, not a finished one.

Numbat at Perth Zoo/Western Australia - Credit Flickr, S J Bennett

A rare marsupial

The numbat is unlike most Australian marsupials. It is diurnal, feeding in daylight, and its diet is almost entirely termites, which it locates with a long, sticky tongue and a sharp sense of timing as termites move near the soil surface. Its striped coat, pointed ears and quick, jerky movements make it one of the most distinctive native mammals in the country. It's also Western Australia's faunal emblem.

That unusual lifestyle is part of what makes it vulnerable. Because numbats depend so heavily on termites and open foraging habitat, they're sensitive to shifts in vegetation, weather and predator pressure. If those conditions change, the species can quickly struggle to find enough food and safe cover.

Myrmecobius fasciatus (Numbat) Dryandra NP/Western Australia - Credit Flickr, patrickkavanagh

How the recovery happened

The numbat's decline was driven mainly by introduced foxes and cats, along with habitat loss and changing fire patterns. By the late 1970s, the wild population had collapsed to around 300 animals, confined to a handful of remnants in south-west Western Australia.

The turnaround began with research in the 1980s and a formal recovery plan in 1994. Since then, the Western Australian government, the Australian Wildlife Conservancy and Perth Zoo's breeding program have combined predator baiting, predator-proof fenced sanctuaries, and translocations to establish at least five additional self-sustaining populations — including reintroduced populations at sites such as Yookamurra in South Australia and Mt Gibson in Western Australia. That work has pushed the population from roughly 300 to somewhere between 2,000 and 3,000 individuals today.

"The downlisting is a recognition of how the species is recovering in areas of concerted conservation efforts, and that extinction is not inevitable when conservation action is taken and sustained over the long term," said Dr Jennifer Anson, senior ecologist at the Australian Wildlife Conservancy and a member of the Numbat Recovery Team, who was part of the assessment behind the change.

Numbat - Credit Flickr, Mark Sanders

Why caution remains

The most important caveat is a legal one: while the IUCN has downgraded the numbat's global status, Australia's own Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act still lists it as Endangered. Nothing about its domestic legal protections has changed. That mismatch underlines how narrow the recovery still is — a few thousand animals, spread across a small number of managed sites, is a long way from a population that no longer needs active intervention.

"Continued management is vital not only to maintain the numbat's unique evolutionary line... but also to support its role in maintaining a healthy ecosystem," said Prof John Woinarski, co-chair of the IUCN's Australasian Marsupial and Monotreme Specialist Group. Without ongoing fox and cat control, he and other researchers warn, numbers could fall back quickly.

Climate change adds a newer layer of risk. Conservation groups say future work has to focus not just on growing the population, but on understanding how numbats cope with hotter, drier conditions, and whether they can forage effectively during extreme heat.

Numbats are carnivorous marsupials that live almost exclusively off termites, but have markings that make it resemble the now extinct thylacine, or Tasmanian tiger. They are in the same order. This is an image of one in its natural habitat - Credit Flickr, Dan Barker

What success looks like — and its limits

The numbat's story matters because it shows conservation can work when it's sustained and evidence-based. Predator-free sanctuaries have become essential breeding and release sites, and animals from healthy populations have been used to found new ones elsewhere. That kind of managed spread gives the species a better chance of surviving a bad year in any single location.

It's also a reminder that a change in classification isn't the same as security. The numbat is one of five Australian marsupials whose status shifted in this same Red List update — a reminder of how actively contested the ground still is for the country's small mammals, even as this particular story moves in the right direction.

Why it matters

For readers, the numbat offers a genuine good-news story from Australian wildlife, but not an uncomplicated one. Recovery here took four decades of sustained fox and cat control, fenced sanctuaries, and careful translocation — and researchers are direct that stopping that work would reverse the gains quickly.

The numbat has stepped back from the brink. Whether it stays there depends on whether the effort behind that shift keeps going.

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REFERENCE

Australian Wildlife Conservancy, 09/07/2026 (viewed 14/07/2026)

https://www.australianwildlife.org/news-and-resources/press-release/numbat-steps-back-from-the-brink