Chicken conservation farmer captures creature thought to be locally extinct for 130 years

A farmer in southern Australia was trying to protect his chickens when he captured an animal thought to have been locally extinct for more than a century. Photos show the spotted creature.

Frank Pao-Ling Tsai, a trout farmer from Beachport, South Australia, rushed outside when he heard “panic” noises from his chickens in the early hours of Tuesday, September 17. 26, I told McClatchy News in an email.

Cai said he found a spotted creature and a dead chicken during the coup.

“I didn’t know what it was at first,” Cai told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. “I expected to find a cat but instead I found this little animal.”

Photos show captured animals. It has a furry brown body, a long tail and a few white spots. Photos show him looking angry, grinning at the camera.

Cai told McClatchy News he captured the creature in a plastic chicken coop. He took photos and shared them in hopes of identifying the animal.

Wildlife officials identified the animal as a spotted-tailed quoll, The Guardian reported.

The spotted-tailed quoll, also known as the tiger quoll, is an endangered marsupial and “the largest remaining native carnivore on the (Australian) continent”, according to the Australian Conservation Foundation. The organization says there are an estimated 14,000 spotted-tailed quolls in the wild.

National Parks and Wildlife Service Limestone Coast ranger Ross Anderson told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation that the last officially recorded sighting of a spotted-tailed quoll in South Australia was in the 1880s. The species was thought to be locally extinct for more than 130 years, the outlet reported.

“This is truly a once-in-a-lifetime event,” Anderson told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

Anderson told The Guardian: “It’s amazing that something we thought was extinct is showing up at our back door.”

The quoll Tsai initially captured managed to escape from a damaged corner of the cage, he said.

According to local Australian media 7 News, wildlife officials set another trap and captured another spotted-tailed quoll, “most likely the same one.”

The story continues

“We can’t say for sure where it came from,” Anderson told the Guardian. “Is it an animal that still exists as a relict population? Is this something you escaped from captivity? Or is it just a lone animal, far away?”

After veterinary examinations and DNA testing, the captured quolls were released to an undisclosed location, 7 News reported.

Wildlife officials will set up cameras and traps to study the rediscovered quoll species and see if there are more quolls around Beach Harbor, The Guardian reports.

Beach Harbor is located in South Australia, approximately 800 miles southwest of Sydney.

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