page_title: Lesser bilby
section_title: Extinction
hierarchical_section_title: Lesser bilby / Extinction
caption_attribution_description: English: Photo taken from one of the highest parts of the Alfred and Marie Range in the Gibson Desert and gives a typical idea of what the general landscape looks like (ie mostly spinifex)
context_page_description: The lesser bilby, also known as the yallara, the lesser rabbit-eared bandicoot or the white-tailed rabbit-eared bandicoot, was a rabbit-like marsupial. The species was first described by Oldfield Thomas as Peregale leucura in 1887 from a single specimen from a collection of mammals of the British Museum. Reaching the size of a young rabbit, this species lived in the deserts of Central Australia. Since the 1950s–1960s, it has been believed to be extinct.
context_section_description: Since its discovery in 1887, the species was rarely seen or collected and remained relatively unknown to science. In 1931, Finlayson encountered many of them near Cooncherie Station, collecting 12 live specimens. Although according to Finlayson this animal was abundant in that area, these were the last lesser bilbies to be collected alive.
  A single specimen collected to the north of Charlotte Waters was deposited at the museum in Melbourne and examined by Balwin Spencer in 1897, not recognizing it as this species. The collector of Spencer's animal, Patrick Michael Byrne, obtained the specimens with some difficulty.
  The last specimen ever found was a skull picked up below a wedge-tailed eagle's nest in 1967 at Steele Gap in the Simpson Desert, Northern Territory. The bones were estimated as being under 15 years old.
  Indigenous Australian oral tradition suggests that this species may have possibly survived into the 1960s.
  The decline in numbers of the lesser bilby and ultimately its extinction was attributed to several different factors. The introductions of foreign predators like the domestic cat and fox, being hunted for food by Indigenous Australians, competition with rabbits for food, changes in the fire regime and the degradation of habitat have all been blamed for the extinction of this species. However, Jane Thornback and Martin Jenkins suggested in their book that the vegetation in the main part of its range remained intact, with little evidence of cattle or rabbit grazing and point to cats and foxes as the most likely cause of the extinction of the lesser bilby.
caption: The spinifex-covered landscape of the Gibson Desert was the native habitat of the lesser bilby.
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