Eastern Quoll is becoming more Popular in European Zoos

[DarthQuell]

Would love to see American zoos start to get more diversity in Australian animals. For most institutions here it's the same budgie aviaries and kangaroo/wallaby walkabouts...

That's better than my zoo. We don't have any Australian species anymore, as far as I know. We used to have koalas, but the red pandas replaced them. We had lorikeets, but that section of the zoo is gone and being replaced by the Galapagos Islands (not the literal islands). About reptiles, I wouldn't have recognized any from Australia, to be honest

 

[Chuditch]

Vaguely related (they are both carnivorous marsupials), but one thing I have only just found out that seems very strange to me is that Europe is seemingly the only continent to have kowari in zoos - there are currently six zoos across Europe that keep them, but none in their native Australia. No idea why that might be, though.

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I'm not too knowledgeable on the situation (and searching doesn't turn up much) but from what I've heard in the past, kowaris were one of the most commonly kept dasyurids in Australia a few decades ago, not just in zoos but also in private hands, and I presume that's how they ended up in Europe. Unfortunately I'm pretty sure the captive population in Australia died out before the turn of the century, apparently due to a lack of breeding (short lifespan leads to rapid decline if breeding efforts aren't maintained), which left the European kowari population (which is now somewhat inbred) as the last in zoos.

It would be great if there was an effort to restart and maintain a captive breeding population in Australia, recent estimates suggest a 20% chance of extinction within the next 20 years and an application has recently been sent in for kowari to be uplisted from Vulernable to Endangered. At the very least the species was reintroduced to a feral free reserve for the first time a couple months ago, which should hopefully grow into a reliable insurance population.

 

[Antimony96]

That's better than my zoo. We don't have any Australian species anymore, as far as I know. We used to have koalas, but the red pandas replaced them. We had lorikeets, but that section of the zoo is gone and being replaced by the Galapagos Islands (not the literal islands). About reptiles, I wouldn't have recognized any from Australia, to be honest

For my home zoo (Philadelphia) it's just red kangaroos, emus, and a few reptiles and amphibians.