Near-Extinct Rodent Successfully Reintroduced to Victorian Park

As a result of a successful breeding program, an endangered rodent has been returned to Melbourne’s Royal Botanic Gardens Cranbourne for the first time in nearly 50 years. The Pookila, also known as the New Holland Mouse, is in the Muridae family and native to Australia. Around 3,000 specimens are thought to exist in Eastern Victoria, out of an estimated 8,000 nationwide. Melbourne Zoo and wildlife conservation park Moonlit Sanctuary worked in collaboration for several years to recover the Pookila from the brink of extinction, and native rodent biologist Phoebe Burns said in a release the work was the “culmination of decades of work by dedicated conservation scientists.”...