Lungtalanana’s ‘loneliest echidna’ likely has company—but how many?

How many echidnas can be hiding on an island where, until recently, rangers feared there might be only one?

On Lungtalanana, in Bass Strait, the answer is becoming more hopeful without yet becoming a count. Trail-camera records from locations about eight kilometres apart strengthen the case that the animal once nicknamed “Australia’s loneliest echidna” has company. They show a wider presence than the first photographs revealed—not, on their own, a population recovering.⁠²

The strongest additional evidence in WWF-Australia’s 5 November 2026 announcement is a photograph taken near the island’s airstrip on 23 August and another at Rebecca Bay, in the south, on 20 October. University of Tasmania echidna expert Associate Professor Stewart Nicol considers it very unlikely that all the observations involve the same animal. Nobody has established how many individuals they represent.⁠²

That distinction matters to the Pakana rangers restoring this Aboriginal-owned island. Knowing what survived is the starting point for protecting it. But the November announcement brings together observations accumulated over years; it is not a discovery made on the day of publication.

Lungtalanana, also known as Clarke Island, lies in the Furneaux group off Tasmania’s north-east coast. It returned to Aboriginal ownership in 2005. ABC News reports its area as about 8,230 hectares. The Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre leads the restoration effort, with rangers managing weeds, conducting cultural burning and monitoring wildlife. Echidnas are called trimanya in palawa kani, the language of Tasmania’s Aboriginal people.⁠¹

The first photographic evidence came from one camera location in western tea-tree scrub. Two pictures, taken months apart in 2023, were initially believed to show the same animal. Rangers did not identify them until November 2024: reviewing the images had to fit around a full workload on Country. The rediscovery was public by 20 March 2025, when WWF asked whether this could be the island’s only surviving echidna. That was a question, never an established population count.⁠⁶

Cooper’s encounter was the first reported face-to-face meeting with an echidna on the island in decades. She was learning to trap feral cats and approached a cage expecting that another raven might have entered it. Instead, an echidna was curled inside. “The excitement was overwhelming. I didn't know if I was going to cry or scream or what,” she told ABC.⁠¹

The animal seemed calm, with its quills raised defensively. Cooper propped the cage door open with a stick and continued her duties. Hours later it was still there, so she gently encouraged it out. It began digging into the sand to protect its underbelly. WWF’s release dates the encounter explicitly to 19 September 2026; this was an accidental capture of a surviving animal, not a reintroduction.⁠²

The dated camera sequence now contains six detections: two from 2023, one from 2025 and three from 2026. Six records do not mean six identified animals. Nor do photographs taken at different places automatically establish different individuals.⁠¹⁠²

“Echidnas can easily cover several kilometres in a night and males will walk further during the breeding season,” Nicol said in the WWF announcement. Even allowing for that movement, he considered the single-animal explanation very unlikely and suggested there could be many more echidnas that rangers had not seen.⁠²

His judgement draws partly on measurements from Tasmania’s southern Midlands, where males made 90 percent of their movements within 60 hectares and females within 35 hectares. Those measurements help explain his interpretation of the distances. They are not measurements of Lungtalanana’s echidnas and cannot be converted into an island population total.⁠²

Speaking to ABC, Nicol said he would be surprised if fewer than a dozen echidnas lived on the island and suggested there could be more than 20 or 30. That is a tentative expert assessment, not a census. He stressed that their elusive behaviour makes estimating numbers difficult without tracking.⁠¹

The evidence therefore supports three different statements with different strengths: echidnas are definitely present; multiple animals are very likely; their total number remains unknown. It does not establish breeding, population growth or how many survived the island’s devastating 2014 bushfire. More cameras and more searching also improve the chances of detection. A growing collection of photographs can reveal animals that were already there.

The fears of disappearance had a grim foundation. European colonisation brought clearing for sheep and cattle pasture, introduced cats that preyed on wildlife, and excluded Traditional Owners from cultural burning. The 2014 fire then devastated the island. WWF identifies echidnas and Tasmanian pademelons as its largest mammals known to have survived both colonisation and that fire.⁠⁶⁠²

The precise fire extent remains unclear in the current reporting. ABC describes both “98 per cent of the vegetation” destroyed and “80 per cent of the island” burned. Those are differently worded measures whose underlying definitions are unavailable; they should not be collapsed into one definitive percentage. The clear finding is survival after severe damage, not a measured rebound.⁠¹

A formal restoration-project launch was announced by GreenCollar on 20 October 2026, but work did not begin then. WWF had publicly described restoration collaboration in February and July 2022. The later launch is a milestone in an existing effort, not the starting line.⁠¹⁷⁠¹⁶⁠¹²

The ambition includes returning at least six locally lost species, among them Bennett’s wallabies, long-nosed potoroos and Bass Strait Islands wombats. Feral-cat removal remains a priority before major rehabilitation and species returns. “We want to make sure they're gone before we start doing any major rehabilitation,” Healthy Country Ranger Tooarn Brown told ABC.⁠¹

WWF supplied seed funding and trail cameras and continues supporting ranger-led monitoring. Rangers are working through hundreds of thousands of images. The work also builds employment, training and knowledge shared between generations: the cameras help Aboriginal people caring for Country understand what remains and where protection is needed.⁠²

Brown sees the echidna sightings as an encouraging sign that management is helping. Demonstrating that effect, however, will require more than additional photographs. No census date or tracking result has been announced. For now, the achievement is both narrower and more substantial than the old nickname suggests: rangers have evidence of echidnas across widely separated parts of Lungtalanana, and better information with which to care for the wildlife that endured.⁠¹⁠²