A tiny endangered wallaby, missing from the mainland for 50 years, just turned up — in its droppings

Cameras could not prove it, so scientists checked the droppings. DNA in scat has confirmed the Nabarlek — Australia's second-smallest wallaby, and an endangered one — at two sites in Western Australia's Kimberley region, the first detections on mainland Dambimangari Country in more than 50 years. The Australian Wildlife Conservancy and the Dambimangari Aboriginal Corporation made the finds together. 'This is very exciting and great news for the species,' said AWC senior field ecologist Larissa Potter. 'It indicates that this threatened wallaby is persisting on the Kimberley mainland in places we didn't previously know about' — and now those places can be protected.

SDG 15 · Life on land — Mechanism: institutional program