Support the Kowari

The kowari is the feistiest little marsupial predator that most people have never heard of. But you are here because you have heard of the kowari and you care. Thank you! Tough little animals, adapted to living on the vast Australia’s desert plains, it’s impossible not to fall in love with a kowari on meeting one. But kowaris are in trouble. Thanks to the invasion of our continent by feral animals, and land use intensification, the kowari now occupies less than 28% of the area it once did. And it continues to disappear from its habitat. In 2023, the status of the kowari was “upgraded” to the more at risk category of Endangered because they face a real risk of extinction in the wild if nothing changes to protect them. Learn more about kowaris and their plight in this Conversation article.

In 2022, some kowaris were moved to Arid Recovery’s predator-proof fenced reserve in outback South Australia. They formed the first protected insurance population for the species. While the translocation has been successful with kowaris doing well at Arid Recovery two years on, there’s still a long way to go to effectively save kowaris from extinction. Exactly why kowaris are declining in the wild is still not clear, but researchers from the University of Adelaide are working hard to find out why. All of this work is being helped by the Kowari Recovery Team that formed this year, bringing experts together to help the species, and by organisation Team Kowari that is working hard to raise the profile of this fabulous beastie.

Donations to The trustee for Arid Recovery Trust will help support the kowari population at Arid Recovery, and fund research in collaboration with Team Kowari to study kowaris in the wild. Your donation will help bring more kowaris to Arid Recovery to secure a healthy, genetically diverse insurance population. Your donation will also fund essential research to understand exactly why kowaris are struggling and what we can do about it. This ambitious research led by Team Kowari and PhD student Molly Barlow will monitor and track wild kowaris in the amazing Mars-like gibber plains of the Sturt Stony Desert to find out what is limiting their survival and how we can turn things around for kowaris to thrive across the deserts again.