In the late 1970s you could have counted every numbat alive and stopped at about 300 [1].
On July 9 the IUCN moved it from Endangered to Near Threatened - two categories in one step, which almost never happens. There are now roughly 2,000 to 3,000 [1].
What did it is not mysterious, and not new technology.
Dr Tony Friend's field research in the 1980s. A Recovery Plan written in 1994. Feral cat and fox control by baiting and predator-proof fencing. Captive breeding at Perth Zoo. Translocations that established five more self-sustaining populations [1].
Forty years of laying baits and mending fences.
Professor John Woinarski, who co-chairs the IUCN's Australasian Marsupial and Monotreme Specialist Group, said the thing worth quoting in full:
'Long-term, strategic and collaborative conservation effort works; without it, invasive cats and foxes will continue to drive Australia's small marsupials to extinction' [1].
Read the second half of that sentence against the same document it came from.
The Red List update that downlisted the numbat also declared 15 animal species extinct - five of them Australian marsupials [1].
The same page carries the proof of what works and the record of what happens without it. The difference between the two columns is whether someone showed up for forty years.
Two honest limits.
Near Threatened is not safe. It is one category above Vulnerable, and it means the species would slide back quickly if conditions changed.
The recovery is also entirely management-dependent. The numbat is not surviving because Australia's invasive predators went away. It is surviving because people keep killing them. Stop the baiting and the fencing and this reverses.
Roughly one in a thousand assessed species has ever been downlisted for genuine improvement rather than better data.
This is one of them.
