Platypuses To Be Reintroduced To Australias Oldest National Park After Half A Century

SYDNEY Scientists in Australia are preparing to reintroduce platypuses to the countrys oldest national park after they disappeared from the area almost 50 years ago, embarking on an ambitious plan to preserve the duck-billed wonders.

Platypuses havent been seen in the countrys Royal National Park, about 20 miles south of Sydney, in decades. But Gilad Bino , a senior lecturer at the University of New South Wales, said the project would see the egg-laying mammals return as early as next year, likening the park to Yellowstone in the United States in terms of its value to the Australian landscape.

The effort, in conjunction with the WWF, Taronga Zoo and New South Wales government, is simple in theory: Bino and his colleagues are studying platypus breeding behaviors in southern New South Wales and will spend the latter half of 2021 surveying the Royal National Park to see if they can find suitable homes for the monotremes hidden in the thick forests of eucalyptus trees. Platypuses need deep pools of water to live in with high banks to build burrows.

If researchers are able to find fitting ground for burrows and deep pools of freshwater full of food, they hope to capture about 10 from thriving platypus populations and reintroduce them into the park by late 2022. Scientists would monitor them for several years to see if they can adapt to the new environments, but Bino said such projects have been successful in other parts of Australia. Translocated platypuses have begun laying eggs and rearing broods of young, called puggles, a few years later.

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