The animal emblem of Western Australia, the numbat, is recovering after decades of conservation efforts, according to the IUCN, the global wildlife conservation authority.
For decades, the numbat or banded anteater (Myrmecobius fasciatus) was listed as endangered on the IUCN Red List. It has now been moved to the lower threat category of near threatened.
“The ‘downlisting’ of the numbat on the IUCN Red List from Endangered to Near Threatened is what we have been working for over the last 40 years!” Tony Friend, research associate at the Western Australian department of biodiversity, conservation and attractions (DBCA), told Mongabay via email. “Consequently, I feel very elated that the more secure status we’ve been able to achieve with the numbat has been recognised by IUCN.”
The striped, ant-and-termite-eating marsupial with reddish-brown fur was once on the verge of extinction. By the late 1970s, around just 300 individuals remained. Their decline was primarily driven by the introduction of predators, such as the red fox (Vulpes vulpes) and domestic cats (Felis catus), alongside threats including habitat destruction and changes in the intensity and frequency of fires.
In 2026, numbat numbers have grown to about 2,000-3,000 individuals thanks to more than 40 years of conservation actions taken by wildlife scientists, the DBCA, Perth Zoo, conservation organizations and community volunteers.
Conservationists have, for example, baited and removed foxes and cats from certain areas. This has “caused spectacular increases in numbat numbers in the two original populations, both located in Western Australia: one of these has been shown to number up to 2000 now,” said Friend, who is a member of the IUCN SSC Australasian Marsupial and Monotreme Specialist Group.
Conservation teams also created fenced areas to keep non-native predators out and established new populations using translocated wild and zoo-bred numbats.
The additional populations have now persisted for at least 10 years, with the oldest established more than 30 years ago, Friend said, “The new populations vary in size, between 20-30 up to 150-200 and are spread across southern Australia, with three in Western Australia, one in South Australia and one in New South Wales.”
Friend added that for the species’ security, it’s important that both overall numbers and the geographic spread of the populations increase. This will help protect the species from pressures such as drought, disease or an increase in predation, he said.
Despite the numbat’s promising recovery, Friend urged caution. Its overall numbers, at around 3,000 “are still very low for an entire species,” he said, “[T]his success has only been achieved by a huge sustained effort in controlling introduced predators (fox and feral cat), the effort must continue or the numbat will quickly fall back to low levels or into extinction.”
Banner image: A numbat in Western Australia. Image by © Kym Nicolson via iNaturalist (CC BY 4.0).
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