Moving Animals to Safe Havens Can Unexpectedly Doom Them
Endangered creatures that are relocated to islands for protection can quickly lose their fear of predators.
Despite everything that had been done to save them, the quolls were still dying. And this time, it wasn’t for the expected reason.
Quolls are small Australian mammals that superficially resemble ferrets, but are more closely related to kangaroos and koalas. Being hunters, they tackle all kinds of small prey. But if they attack cane toads—large invasive amphibians that were introduced to Australia in the 1930s—they get a mouthful of poison, and inevitably die from violent seizures and heart attacks. As the toads spread through the continent,
