00:02Hoping to catch a glimpse of a northern quoll.
00:05Alright, let's have a look and see what we've got.
00:07For almost a year, Ryan Salmon has had more than 30 wildlife tracking cameras set up
00:12throughout the Northern Territory's Litchfield National Park,
00:15but he's had no luck spotting one.
00:18No quolls on this one again, but we'll keep trying.
00:21Litchfield ranger Darius Nasser used to see northern quolls almost every night.
00:26It's around 2009, 2010. I used to see them all the time around my house.
00:31I used to live a little bit remote, so your dogs would be going off and everything else like that
00:37and it would be quite abundant quolls back then.
00:42But he hasn't spotted one in a long time.
00:45Probably about four or five years ago maybe, the last one I've actually seen.
00:49Northern quoll numbers are in decline,
00:51and experts believe changes to fire management and feral animals are to blame.
00:56Cats especially are a big issue and foxes in areas where they're common.
01:01But cane toads I think are probably a driving force.
01:04And there's concerns for what that could mean for ecosystems throughout Northern Australia.
01:09Aside from the dingoes, I reckon they are probably one of the apex predators out here.
01:14So they're the ones managing not just insect populations but also other rodent populations.
01:18You take that one little piece out of that ecosystem and then something else happens
01:23and it's sort of like a bit of a snowball effect and you never know.
01:28Something could change.
01:29There's hopes awareness and conservation programs can bring populations back before it's too late.
01:35If we lose these quolls, mate, we won't see them again.
01:38It would be like a bloody thylacine or something like that or whatever else.
01:41You never know.
01:43We've got too many other extinct animals around already as it is.
01:46We'll learn to have another one.
01:46A fight against time for a vanishing species.
