A two week old Western Swamp Tortoise gets familiar with a fresh strawberry at the Perth Zoo.
Camera IconA two week old Western Swamp Tortoise gets familiar with a fresh strawberry at the Perth Zoo. Credit: PerthNow, Jackson Flindell.

Perth Zoo helps bring Western Swamp Tortoise back from brink of extinction

PerthNow

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SLOW and steady wins the race reads Aesop’s famous fable.

And that’s exactly the approach taken by the Perth Zoo team as they bring the western swamp tortoise back from the brink of extinction.

This two-week-old tortoise is the 52nd hatchling for this year’s breeding season, the zoo’s most successful.

The creature’s gender won’t be known until it reaches 200g, which can take up to seven years.

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There are 244 western swamp tortoises at Perth Zoo. To keep track of the tiny reptiles, each tortoise is painted with an individual dot pattern, photographed and recorded.

The western swamp tortoise is Australia’s rarest reptile and classified as critically endangered.

When this little hatchling reaches 100g, about three years of age, it will be released into the wild.

Zoo-bred animals have been released to shore up populations at Ellen Brook and Twin Swamps reserves, as well as establishing new populations at Moore River and Mogumber reserves.

In the 1950s, the western swamp tortoise was thought to be extinct having not been sighted for 100 years until a West Australian schoolboy found one walking across the road.

By the 1980s, it was thought fewer than 30 individuals remained in the wild. The breeding efforts by Perth Zoo brought this species back from the brink of extinction.