“Animal fire brigade”: rabbit kangaroos released in Australia Extreme weather in the US: winter storm in the north, heat in the south

Australia’s wildlife is richer with 20 rare long-faced kangaroos: as part of a breeding program for the endangered marsupials that live only Down Under, the young animals have now been released into the wild in a protected area of ​​Barrington Tops National Park some 170 miles north of Sydney, the organization Aussie Ark announced on Friday. The special thing: The Potorous tridactylus, as it is called by its scientific name, is celebrated by experts as an “animal firefighter”.

“It is one of the smallest and oldest members of the kangaroo family and a living fossil that has remained relatively unchanged for about ten million years,” wrote Aussie Ark. However, many Australians have never heard of the animal, which is called “Long-nosed Potoroo” in its homeland. “This is all the more tragic when you consider the ecological role of the species, which can ultimately save human lives,” the animal rights activists emphasized.

Long-nosed kangaroos feed primarily on underground mushrooms and truffles, explains Tim Faulkner, the organization’s president. These are dug up with their front feet, which causes the animals to move and excavate large amounts of leaves on the forest floor. This unusual behavior not only aids in leaf decomposition, but also keeps the soil moist and encourages the growth of new plants – ultimately mitigating the power of wildfires. Faulkner called the adorable firefighters “engineers of the Earth’s ecosystem.”

Appropriately, even the local fire department showed up to be part of the liberation. “I wish we could rent the animals from the troops,” Fire Chief Brendan White laughed.

Long-faced kangaroos – also known as long-nosed kangaroos – are classified as vulnerable, according to the Australian Department of the Environment. Most notably, the catastrophic wildfires of 2019 and 2020 have drastically reduced their numbers. (aeg/sda/dpa)