More than 30 wildlife cameras and 4,000 camera-trapping nights at Litchfield National Park have recorded buffalo, pigs and cats, but not a single northern quoll. Ryan Sauermann, a University of Melbourne PhD student, said the marsupial may be locally extinct in the region.
A disappearance measured on camera
Sauermann began the project hoping to establish a captive-breeding and rewilding colony. Now, the research focuses on whether quolls remain in the park and, if they don't, what caused their disappearance. Nearly 12 months of footage have yielded no quoll sightings, though Sauermann said that lack of detections doesn't prove the animals are gone.
“Just because we're not finding anything right now doesn't mean that they're not here, doesn't mean we should stop looking,” he said. The study pairs food-baited camera traps with reports from members of the public. Sauermann put up flyers around the park asking visitors to report sightings and contacted Facebook groups, but those efforts have had “very limited success so far.”
Sauermann has travelled from Melbourne to the Top End “every couple of months” since late last year and said he would keep searching. The work now centers on finding out whether a local population survives, rather than creating the colony he originally planned.
Threats to the quoll population
Sauermann said cane toads were largely responsible for the decline. “As the cane toad front moves through, we're losing 85 to 95 per cent [of the northern quoll population],” he said. Changes to fire management and other feral species also pose major threats.
“More frequent burns tend to be worse for the quolls as well,” Sauermann said. “The introduction of feral predators — cats especially — are a big issue.” Camera traps have recorded cats in the park, along with buffalo and pigs; the article gives no population counts for those species and doesn't identify who is responsible for their presence.
Northern quolls are listed as “endangered” nationally and “critically endangered” in the Northern Territory. The article names no commercial beneficiary and gives no financial figures connected to the decline. It points to ecological pressures: cane toads, feral predators and changes to fire management.
Local knowledge and the ecological stakes
Northern Territory Parks and Wildlife ranger Darius Nasir is helping with the research. Nasir, a senior park ranger, recalled seeing quolls “almost every night,” but said he hadn't seen one for four or five years. “Around 2009, 2010, I used to see them all the time around my house … my dogs would be going off and it'd be quolls, quite abundant quolls back then,” he said.
Sauermann described the carnivorous quoll as “probably one of the apex predators out here,” aside from dingoes, and said quolls manage insect and rodent populations. “They're massively important for the ecosystem.” Nasir called keeping quolls in northern Australia “greatly important” and warned of an ecological snowball effect if they disappeared. “If we lose these quolls, we won't see them again — it'll [be like the bloody thylacine],” he said. “We've got too many extinct animals around already as it is, let alone [adding] another one.”
Research in 2025 confirmed spotted-tail and northern quolls were “functionally” extinct in large parts of Queensland, where introduced cane toads also pose an ecological threat. Sauermann urged pet owners to keep dogs and cats away from wildlife, protect the environment and limit fire risk. “There's so much more out there than I think people realise and just getting people interested would be a huge, huge win,” he said.