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Meet the Bandicoot: Nature’s Little Eco Digger

While most of us are asleep at night, this tiny little nocturnal creature is awake and working in our gardens and parks – reshaping grasslands one dig at a time.

The Eastern Barred Bandicoot – a rabbit-sized marsupial with distinctive pale stripes along its back – is an Australian animal with an incredible superpower. Although they’re quite small, bandicoots are ecosystem engineers: their foraging behaviour creates cascading benefits for entire landscapes.

Below we dig into what makes bandicoots nature’s unsung heroes.

Nature’s Little Digging Machines: Bandicoots at Work

These little night-shift workers can create multiple digs into the soil as they forage for food like beetle larvae and earthworms. Using their pointed snouts and strong forearms and claws, bandicoots can cover a significant amount of ground with their digs in one evening.

The environmental benefits of bandicoots’ digging action are multiple, as described in more detail below.

CVA Project Coordinator Travis Scicchitano says:

The grass can build up with its own leaf litter which we call biomass. When this happens it makes it hard for seeds to hit the soil and get access to sunlight. But bandicoot diggings expose what lies beneath, making them excellent eco engineers.

The Ecological Benefits of Bandicoot Digging Activity

Did you know that there are a multitude of ecological benefits associated with bandicoot digging activity? Bandicoot digging helps shape the environment, making these small creatures powerful ecosystem engineers.

Bandicoots are therefore an indicator of a healthy grassland ecosystem, because when bandicoots thrive, many other species will too. By monitoring bandicoot populations, we can also keep track of the health of entire ecosystems.

Here are 7 ways that bandicoots help shape our natural environment, making them true unsung environmental heroes:

1. Soil aeration: Every little dig helps to oxygenate the soil, improving the soil health and structure and enabling better water infiltration. Many grasslands suffer from soil compaction, with bandicoot digging helping to improve spill biology and health, thereby reviving native grasslands.
2. Seed dispersal and germination: Bandicoot digs help to create the perfect microhabitats for seeds to germinate in protected little holes, thereby helping to revegetate grasslands. Their digging activity can also help to break seed dormancy in some native plant species, helping to encourage them to grow.
3. Nutrient cycling: As the bandicoots dig and turn over the soil, they also help to bring nutrients to the surface, mixing organic matter into the soil layers. Their droppings also contribute to nutrient levels and this nutrient cycling helps the entire food web and ecosystem.
4. Pest control: Bandicoots can eat large amounts of soil invertebrates, including many pests. This can help to keep the insect populations in balance naturally, reducing the need for pest control through using chemicals.
5. Climate resilience: Healthy soils that are aerated and less compacted, are more resistant to droughts and able to absorb water and avoid runoff and erosion. Healthy soils also store more carbon, which helps to mitigate the impacts of climate change.  CVA is dedicated to building climate resilience through a range of other initiatives, including Urban Shade Forests.
6. Supporting pollinators: When soils are healthy, there are generally more flowering plants and more diversity of plant species which provides food and habitat for pollinators like butterflies and bees. Pollinators in turn help to maintain biodiversity and play many vital functions in our ecosystems. CVA supports pollinators through our Nature Blocks initiative (which can include building a bee hotel) and we encourage everyone to get involved in the annual Australian Pollinator Week celebrations.
7. Promoting a culture of conservation and raising awareness: Bandicoots are fast becoming a flagship species for grassland conservation. They help to promote conservation and ecological values, while also helping to raise awareness about our natural environment, biodiversity and the importance of maintaining ecological balance. CVA volunteers at the Woodlands bandicoot sanctuary can get involved in learning about bandicoots while fostering a sense of community connectedness and getting hands-on wildlife conservation and citizen-science experience.

Why Native Grasslands Need Bandicoot Diggers

Australia is famous for its vast expanses of land. But, many of our terrestrial ecosystems have been severely destroyed and degraded – cleared for agriculture and urban development.

Home to some of the world’s most unique and biodiverse communities of plants and animals, Australia is also losing biodiversity at an alarming rate. Because abundant biodiversity and functioning ecosystems help us to mitigate climate change, produce crops, get access to clean water, and a myriad of other benefits, our rapid loss of biodiversity is a reason for significant concern.

Many of Australia’s ecosystems now survive as fragmented patches. Grasslands are no exception. Up to 99% of temperate grassland in south-eastern Australia has been destroyed.

With less than 1% of these native grasslands surviving, we need to take urgent action to help protect and restore grassland habitats. A powerful and effective way that we can help to restore grasslands is by bringing bandicoots back to the grasslands. By restoring bandicoot populations to grasslands, we can also help to restore the ecological functioning of these critical ecosystems.

It is this ecosystem approach to conservation that has become famous in places like Yosemite National Park in the USA, where the reintroduction of wolves to the park helped to restore ecological balance and build resilience.

‘Bringing Back the Night Shift’ at Woodlands Historic Park

Conservation Volunteers Australia (CVA) has been working with partners and volunteers at Woodlands Historic Park in Victoria since 2012 to help save bandicoots from extinction and restore grassland ecosystems.

The Eastern Barred Bandicoot was once widespread in parts of Victoria, but in 1989, it was declared “Extinct in the Wild“. Their population numbers plummeted due to a combination of habitat loss and fragmentation, and predation by foxes and cats. Fortunately, immense collaborative efforts to save the bandicoot resulted in them being later classified as “Endangered”, which is a testament to these joint efforts.

Now, up to 400 bandicoots can call Woodlands home, where predator-proof fencing, weed removal, rabbit and fox eradication, and grassland restoration are helping to ensure their population numbers increase. To ensure their continued survival, we must maintain and grow these population numbers, particularly challenging as these nocturnal marsupials have short lifespans of just 2 to 3 years.

The ultimate aim of our conservation efforts is to reintroduce bandicoots so that their populations expand beyond the fenced areas – restoring the ecosystem function and resilience of the surrounding grasslands.

The Importance of Every Little Digger: Bandicoots Reengineer Our Future

Australia’s loss of biodiversity doesn’t only mean we’re losing species – it also means we’re losing ecological functions provided by nature like clean air, clean water, resilience to climate change, etc.

By saving bandicoots, which help reengineer grassland ecosystems through their digging – we are helping to restore grassland ecosystems to their full health so that they can function optimally. Bandicoots therefore play a critical role in providing ecosystem-based solutions to climate change, biodiversity loss, and to restoring ecosystem balance through restoration.

What has been achieved by CVA and partners at the Woodlands Historic Park is truly remarkable and shows that community-led conservation, collaborative partnerships and evidence-based management can lead to significant conservation and restoration success.

🌏 Get Involved in Bandicoot Conservation and Grassland Restoration

Here are 4 ways you can support bandicoots and grassland restoration:

1. Volunteer to save bandicoots at Woodlands Historic Park in Victoria
2. Learn more from our informational booklet and spread the word about these incredible creatures
3. Support our ongoing conservation work by making a once-off or recurring monthly donation to CVA

Help build biodiversity in your home or backyard by downloading the CVA App and creating a Nature Block today.