Aussie Ark partners with NSW Government to save Broad-toothed Rat from extinction

The critically endangered Broad-toothed Rat in the Barrington Tops of NSW has been saved from extinction through a partnership between conservation organisation Aussie Ark and the New South Wales State Government.

After painstakingly surveying the remote sites in which they are found, elated Aussie Ark rangers found six individuals. These precious native rats will form a critical captive breeding program to save them from extinction and rewild the population.

Aussie Ark and the New South Wales state government recognise it is hard to get the public and community excited about a ‘rat’. However, the rat is symbolic for far more. It is a specialised species that lives in highland swamps, filled with peat and has been around since the age of dinosaurs. By saving the rat we save so much more - the habitat, the endemic dragonflies, terrestrial orchids and provide a place for future generations to explore in its entirety.

Over the past three decades the Barrington Broad-toothed rats have all but disappeared. Having become locally extinct from two-thirds of the swamplands they once inhabited. The Barrington population of the Broad-toothed rat is found in one isolated area of the world heritage listed region of the Barrington Tops and although clear numbers are unknown, the worst case scenario puts them in the low hundreds.

Australia has the worst mammal extinction rate on earth. Nearly 40 mammal species have been lost to extinction in the last 200 years. That number is as many as the rest of the world put together. We cannot allow the Barrington Broad-toothed rat to be next.

Aussie Ark jumped into action following a successful crowdfunding campaign in 2021, raising community and partner funds to build a state-of-the-art breeding facility for the disappearing species. The facilities, which are the first of its kind for the endangered animal, will create a healthy “insurance” population of the species. The population will be managed in these captive facilities in preparation for the animals to be returned to the wild.  The community is behind this rat, and further supports the Aussie Ark state Government partnership.

Aussie Ark President Tim Faulkner spoke to the difficulties in finding the founding rats for the breeding program, stating “In February this year, we set and checked 3,000 traps and only managed to find a single Broad-toothed Rat, this raised immediate alarm bells. We knew the species was in trouble, but nobody knew it was this bad. So we took action”

The Barrington Broad-toothed rat is under extreme pressure from feral pests such as the fox and cat, hard hooved feral horses, invasive weeds including scotch broom, fire and of course climate change. This critical intervention will prevent extinction and in partnership with the New South Wales government will address the above threats.

Faulkner continued “we are the only solution to the problem. Public-private partnerships such as this can make a real difference to our threatened Australian wildlife that is disappearing before our eyes. I feel very passionate about the fact that if Aussie Ark had not intervened, the Broad-toothed rat would have been next on our devastatingly long extinction list.”

You can help stop the extinction of the Broad-toothed rat by donating to Aussie Ark’s program today.

Images from top: Aussie Ark team with Broad-toothed Rat; Aussie Ark Broad toothed Rat; Aussie Ark President Tim Faulkner with Broad toothed Rat