There is more to ‘why save bilbies’ than the fact that they look amazing, they have adorable ears and beautiful silky soft fur.
Firstly, bilby ancestors have been found as fossilised remains dating back 15 million years – which make them a very special species. They have been an intrinsic part of the landscape across 70% of the Australian mainland for all that time. From the time Europeans arrived, bilbies stretched from the Great Dividing range in the east to the Gascoyne coast in the west.
Yet in the last 100 years they have been pushed to the brink of extinction as a direct result of colonisation, change of land use, population growth, and introduced non-native species.
The bilby is also an animal at the heart of Australia’s First People’s culture and is a significant creature present in many dreamtime stories and cave art. CLICK HERE to see the most recently discovered and very ancient paintings which include a bilby.
Secondly, bilbies are a scientific ‘flagship’ species. This means that their protection is even more important because their survival in turn increases the chances of 16 other threatened species and countless others who share the same habitats and threatening processes in the wild.
Bilbies are one of nature’s eco-engineers, they play a really important part in the restoration of soil and rejuvenation of vegetation in arid Australia. They use their strong front paws to dig deep burrows which spiral down into the ground for roughly 2 metres.
They love to dig!
In doing so, they create many disturbances in the compacted and hardened soil allowing plant material to fall in and decompose. At the same time, soil is aerated which supports seed germination.
Bilbies essentially create numerous compost pits every night.
That’s nature’s perfectly balanced ecosystem at work, which is at threat from the continued loss of bilbies. Where they have disappeared, hard-hoofed animals compact the surface of the ground and water, when it comes, reacts in a different way. Instead of soaking in, it runs straight off and in doing so changes flood patterns which in turn changes the balanced ecosystem of arid Australia.
Bilby habitats also give protection to other endangered species – brush-tailed mulgara and spinifex hopping mice permanently occupy bilby burrows. A further two species – short-beaked echidnas and sand goannas – regularly using bilby burrows for shelter.
In total, an additional 16 mammal, bird, reptile, amphibian and invertebrate threatened species were detected interacting with bilby burrows. There was no difference in the number of species using disused or occupied bilby burrows, indicating that even disused bilby burrows are important structures for other species.
So, saving the bilby from extinction also means saving other native species plus it will help restore the critically important ecosystems at play in arid Australia.
The bilby is a nocturnal, omnivorous marsupial in the order Peramelemophia (bandicoots), It can also be referred to as a dalgyte, pinkie or rabbit-eared bandicoot. Strictly speaking though, they are not a bandicoot, they are a family of their own.
Bilbies are the last of our Arid Bandicoots in Australia – there were 6 and the bilby is the only remaining one, We lost the Lesser bilby (Macrotis leucura) in the 1950s. So when we refer to bilbies, we are really talking about Macrotis lagotis – the greater bilby.
‘Macrotis’ means big-eared in Greek. Rude!
Our first nation’s people across Australia have many names for the bilby too such as Mankurr (Martu & Manjilyjarra people) and Ninu (Pitjantjatjara people). However, the word ‘bilby’ comes from the aboriginal word ‘bilba’ used by the Yuwaalaraay people and actually means ‘long nosed rat’.
The Greater bilby is absolutely unique in looks. They can of course easily be distinguished by their long ears, and the white crest on their tail.
Lets talk about those ears – they are big! They can be as much as 66% of the body length of the bilby, providing an easy point of differentiation between bilbies and other marsupials. These ears are super sensitive – useful for listening for predators as well as prey. When they dig their ears are above ground, so they can listen for predators approaching Their ears are hairless and covered by a network of blood vessels which helps to cool them. When they are relaxed they go floppy.
Bilby eyesight is poor and they are also super sensitive to light. They tend to emerge from their burrows and hour after dusk and return an hour or so before dawn.
Our beautiful bilbies are about the same size as rabbit when grown, although adult females are usually around half the size of adult males. They have soft, silky fur that is ash grey in colour over the top of the body but is white underneath. The fur is much softer than you expect, softer than a rabbit.
The bilby has a very characteristic tail which is their biggest downfall and their most cryptic secret. The tail starts dark coloured and then ends in a white crest which hides a pink spur. We have no idea what that spur is for! And the white end? Well, one theory is that due to the fact that bilbies run in a zig-zag, their white tail crest would flick the opposite way and the predator would head for the ‘lure’ rather than the bilby itself. Unfortunately, with the rise of the feral cat it now acts like a flag to invasive predators at night. They might just as well be wearing a head torch, so easy are they for cats and foxes to see.
Bilbies have impressive teeth – 48, razor-sharp and larger than other bandicoots. Everyone at the Fund who has had to handle a bilby has experienced these teeth on occasion and would prefer not to again! Bilbies are omnivores, so they eat vegetation as well as insects and spiders. Their favourite food is the bush onion or yalka, which usually appears after fire. Their favourite food in our breeding facility is mealworms and they are an excellent source of protein. They have a long sticky tongue and a long snout with a pink nose and an excellent sense of smell.
Bilbies’ hind legs are similar in shape to a macropod (kangaroo/wallaby), but with syndactylous (fused) toes and an enlarged fourth digit, making for a very distinct footprint. 
Their forelegs are extremely strong – right from birth – as they have to use them to climb from the urogenital opening up to their mother’s rear facing pouch. The pouch is ‘upside-down’, so that when the mother digs she is not shovelling dirt into her pouch.
Well, that’s a good question. The overall bilby population in the wild has suffered a catastrophic decline, largely due to the introduction of invasive predators to Australia and changes in land management practices including fire and intensive agriculture. Over 80% of our remaining wild bilby populations only occur on Indigenous Protected Areas “IPA’S”, others are only safe behind large “Predator Exclusion Fences” or in captivity for breeding to support a National Recovery Plan for the species. This means that it is a massive challenge for all our bilby lovers to see one for real.
Bilbies’ natural habitats are spinifex grasslands and mulga scrublands in the hot, dry, arid and semi-arid areas of Australia. They are now only found living wild in remote parts of western Queensland, the Northern Territory and Western Australia.
They live in spiralling burrows which they dig up to 2m deep. This depth helps to keep them safe from predators and also provide at a constant temperature range of 23/24°C, as bilbies can become heat stressed. A bilby may have as many as 12 burrows, but a female will choose one as the natal burrow when she is ready to give birth.
The bilby digs a lot. This digging breaks up the soil and helps with composting. Their multiple homes mean that other species can use them for shelter too.
The bilby is omnivorous and its diet includes bulbs, fruit, seeds, fungi, insects, worms, termites, small lizards and spiders. One of its favourite plant foods is the bush onion or yalka which grows in desert sand plains after fires.
Bilbies have adapted to survive in the absence of permanent water because, like the koala, they get most of their moisture from their food. This has been essential to their survival over millions of years. However, the fact that feral foxes and cats can now find artificial sources of water or are adapting to the harsh conditions, means that they can now survive in the arid areas where previously the bilbies were near untouchable.
Bilbies are usually solitary animals and the female bilbies tend to associate with males just to mate. 
Once pregnant they have one of the fastest pregnacies of any mammal – just 12 – 14 days.
When the baby joey is born it looks like a baked bean with legs. (image). It stays in its mother’s pouch for between 75 and 80 days and is independent about two weeks later. Female bilbies have a backward-opening pouch with eight nipples. The pouch opens backward so as not to be filled with earth while digging.
At around six months a female bilby is sexually mature and can breed and usually has one or two young at a time. Although it is rare, she can have triplets. In a good season in the wild, bilbies can have up to four litters.
They live for about 5 to 7 years in the wild and up to 11 years in captivity.
Bilbies have been in Australia for over 15 million years so naturally they feature in dreamtime.
The bilby is a very important animal for Aboriginal people. Its common name comes from the Yuwaalayaay word, Bilba. Aboriginal languages have different names for Bilby. In one example the bilby is called ‘Ninu’.
Unusually, many languages have a separate name for the Ninu’s tail because it was super valuable. Like most Australian animals, Bilby was a meat animal because Aboriginal people needed food. The Ninu tail was made into body decorations that celebrate the beauty and virility of women and men. Bilby were also a part of Tjukurrpa stories that connect people to places and people to each other along songlines.
Here is a LINK, to an article on the ABC where they show how the Birriliburu rangers work on their country to identify and protect the ‘muntarngarku’ (bilby). There are many dreamtime stories about bilbies and one day we should like to collect them, in the meantime check this article out.
Well, we are a tiny team. Kevin Bradley (CEO) is the only full-time employee and each year for the last 5 years he has spent pver 300 days in the field, on the tools, in the fenced sanctuary where we are releasing bilbies for free-living.
This very short video will give you an idea about Kev’s daily life.
The rest of the team – Kat & Paula work part-time looking after the breeding program and facility in Charleville and Peg & Sara do all of the fundraising and bilby admin. We admit we are small but we feel mighty in the face of adversity with the support of so many wonderful bilby lovers!
The Bilby sanctuary is a 25km2 area inside Currawinya National Park. The fence was designed to protect bilbies from feral animals and predators (feral cats and foxes manily) to enable them to live and breed in safety. It opened in 2003 and cost $500 000 to build the 25sq km electrified predator-exclusion fence.
Much of the money raised at this time came from selling thousands of panels of the fence.
The key features of the fence are:
- the 400mm wire netting ‘skirt’ at the base of the fence on each side blocks invaders from burrowing in and bilbies burrowing out under the fence
- 4,100 short ‘springy’ wires pull the netting across to create a ‘floppy top’ which stops foxes and cats climbing over it
- 5,000 volts of electricity pulse through six surrounding wires, preventing emus and kangaroos from crashing into and damaging the netting.
Unfortunately, flooding in the area a few years after the project had started re-build the bilby populations, meant that the lower part of the fence rusted and failed in certain areas and before we knew it, we were back at square 1.The Queensland Government committed $700,000 to replacing the bottom panel of the fence with stainless steel wire to make it impervious to corrosion from flooding events. The government made good, and the new fence panels were in place by 2018.
Currawinya National Park falls close to the centre of the bilby’s former range in eastern Australia. Weather conditions there provide a reliable and diverse food supply. The reintroduction of bilbies to this park forms part of a national strategy to recover endangered species to either their former status or at a minimum to secure the status of existing wild populations.
Now that the area inside the Bilby Fence is free from feral cats, we have released bilbies already. Initially it was just 6 trail-blazers, who were very carefully monitored and tracked, They have since been joined by 14 bilby pioneers and 6 little rippers. We *think* that there are maybe around 60 bilbies in the community now. But they are quite hard to count!
The Fund is aiming for an insurance population for Currawinya of 400 bilbies.
This is little Star being released in 2019.
In Charleville, we have had the great favour of being able to construct a facility on government owened land where we can breed bilbies and condition them for release to the sanctuary.
Kat, assisted by Paula, works with the recovery team to manage the genetic diversity of the Currawinya bilbies and bilbies that are being sent to other sanctuaries across Australia.
Maintaining this genetic diversity is key to the survival of the bilbies in all their former ranges.
The Charleville breeding facility is key to saving bilbies not just for the sanctuary at Currawinya, but across Australia. No other organisation has been as successful as the Fund at getting everything right. We are currently fundraising for an upgrade to the facilities so that we can double our breeding capacity.
We aim to reach around 400 free-living bilbies behind the fence, who, if the feral populations are controlled, might start to expand further into the park.
On another point, we suspect that there may be a wild bilby population in the Birdsville area. We would very much like to survey this area to establish whether there are bilbies and then consider how best to use our knowledge to protect that community plus perhaps even borrow some genetics.
We still very much live ‘hand-to-mouth’ and have to fundraise frenziedly to finance each step of the way, we are very grateful that so far we have kept on track and so many Australians have helped us!
