In the game, you'll see how quickly development can threaten animals like our bandicoots with extinction. The Bandicoot Valley game board represents the forest where the bandicoots live. When the game begins, the forest will contain as many bandicoots as it can support, although usually human development will have broken up the board into several smaller forests. Disasters are things like bushfires, invasions of feral cats, and other events that put pressure on bandicoot populations. Sadly, these events occur frequently.
Breeding gives the bandicoots the opportunity to build their numbers back up.
Remember that bandicoots cannot move between different forests. As you'll see when you play the game, this makes them very vulnerable to extinction. Each forest area on the board has a number on it. When you begin the game, put this many bandicoot counters into each area. Each turn, roll a dice and look up the result on the disaster table, and follow the instructions.