ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO, had you wandered the red-dirt plains of Sturt National Park in the far north-west Corner Country of New South Wales, you'd have encountered the burrows of the greater bilby (Macrotis lagotis). If your eye was in, you may well have spotted the den entrances on the desert floor or in dirt mounds — unless mulga scrub obscured them.The spiral-shaped hollows extended for up to 3m beneath the ground, cocooning the bilbies during daylight hours.Today, the desert is a very different place.These marsupials are gone from Sturt. Due to introduced pests, habitat degradation and changes to fire-management practices after Aboriginal people were removed from their lands, Australia has suffered a wave of extinctions during the past 200 years. Experts believe more than 10 per cent of our 273 terrestrial mammal species has gone forever, with another 21 per cent currently threatened.
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