Eight endangered animals that may be living on your farm

But what sort of animals are actually at risk?

Here's a few iconic species that are endangered, but could be living on your farm.

Koala

The iconic koala was declared endangered across the eastern half of Australia at the start of 2022, following the cumulative impacts of drought, bushfires and land clearing.

The country lost 30 per cent of its total koala population between 2018 and 2021, according to a report from the Australian Koala Foundation. That loss was particularly stark in New South Wales, which saw a 41 per cent decline.

The iconic species is now in danger of becoming locally extinct in some NSW, Queensland and the ACT.

Regent Honeyeater

The Regent Honeyeater, with its brilliant flashes of yellow embroidery, was once seen overhead in flocks of hundreds. Today, widespread clearance of their woodland habitat and competition for nectar from larger, more aggressive honeyeaters has caused their numbers and range decline dramatically in the last 30 years.

The Regent Honeyeater although a striking and distinctive, was once known as the 'Warty-faced Honeyeater'. This was due to the warty bare skin around the eye.

As the name suggests, Regent Honeyeaters feed mainly on nectar from a small number of eucalypt species. These birds act as a pollinator for many flowering plants. They also feed on other plant sugars, as well as on insects, spiders and fruits.

They can be found in eucalypt forests and woodlands, particularly in blossoming trees and mistletoe, in the inland slopes of south-east Australia. They can also occasionally be spotted in orchards and urban gardens.

Greater Glider

The Greater Glider is Australia's largest gliding mammal. Greater Gliders have thick, dark grey-brown fur on their back and creamy white fur on their under-side, and can be found in different dark and light-coloured morphs. They have a long, furry prehensile tail and large furry ears.

Once widespread, they still live in some healthy forests along eastern Australia, southern Queensland and southeastern New South Wales, as well as in the Victorian Central Highlands.

Greater Gliders are forest dependent and prefer older tree age classes in moist forest types. They use hollow-bearing trees for shelter and nesting, with each family group using multiple den trees - sometimes up to 20 - within its home range. They eat mainly young eucalypt leaves, with a preference for certain species.

Researchers also believe they communicate with each other through scent marking rather than sounds. In fact, they don't make loud sounds at all.

Gang-gang cockatoo

The iconic bird - which is the ACT's emblem - was moved from threatened to endangered in March 2022.

The Gang-gang Cockatoo are small for cockatoos, usually around 33-36cm long. Male Gang-gang Cockatoos are easily distinguished by their wispy red crest, which looks like a feather duster. The dark red of their crest and head stands out against their slate grey bodies.

The females are not as brightly coloured as the males, and have a grey head and body with a barred breast and orange-red underparts.

Gang-gang cockatoos make long rasping screeches similar to the sound of a rusty hinge or of a cork being twisted from a bottle. Such a call is made during flight or while the birds are perching in a treetop. During feeding, this cockatoo makes a soft growling.

Gang-gang Cockatoos are endemic to south-eastern Australia. They are widespread in eastern NSW down through Victoria's north-eastern, with some records in east Melbourne, Mornington Peninsula and south-western Gippsland. A disjunct (cut off) population is found in the western half of Victoria from the Otway region to the South Australian border.

Tiger Quoll

The spotted-tailed or tiger quoll is mainland Australia's largest carnivorous marsupial.

The spotted-tailed quoll is about the size of a domestic cat but has shorter legs and a more pointed face than a cat. Its fur is rich red to dark brown and covered with white spots on the back which continue down the tail.

The average weight of an adult male is about 3.5 kilograms and an adult female about 2 kilograms.

The spotted-tailed quoll is found along both sides of the Great Dividing Range from the Victorian to the Queensland borders. The species have also been reported in the western parts of NSW.

Spotted-tailed quolls live in various environments, including forests, woodlands, coastal heathlands and rainforests. They are sometimes seen in open country or on grazed areas and rocky outcrops. They are mainly solitary animals and will make their dens in rock shelters, small caves, hollow logs and tree hollows. They use these dens for shelter and to raise young.

These animals are highly mobile. They can move up to several kilometres in a night and may have quite large territories. Within their territories, they will have latrine sites where they defecate. These are often in exposed areas, such as on rocky outcrops.

Numbat

The Numbat is small to medium-sized marsupial that's the faunal emblem of Western Australia. They survive in two naturally occurring populations in the southwestern portion of Western Australia. Other populations in NSW and South Australia have been established with successful reintroductions in its historic range. Even so, there are still only about 800 mature individuals left.

Their termite diet means they need to be active during the day.

Due to their size, Numbats are hunted by many animals like feral cats, foxes, dingoes and birds of prey.

They spend nights hiding in hollow logs or burrows that are too narrow for predators to enter. To further protect themselves from predators at night, Numbats use their very thick-skinned rump to block the entrance. Now that's using your behind to get ahead.

Spectacled Flying-fox

In February 2019, the Australian government upgraded the threatened status from vulnerable to endangered, after almost a third of the bat population died in a severe heatwave in Queensland in late 2018.

Spectacled flying foxes are a beautiful large black flying fox with rings of usually pale fur (but can be anything from blonde to dark brown) around the eyes and across the back of the neck and shoulders.

They occur in the Wet Tropics from Cooktown to Ingham, with colonies of the spectacled flying fox found in rainforests, mangroves, and paperbark and eucalypt forests.

When a pup is born it cannot maintain its own body temperature and must remain on mum all the time, hanging on as she flies out at night to feed. The claws bed into her fur and the mouth is firmly on the nipple. By about 6 weeks of age the pup is too heavy to fly with and it is left in a creche in the roost with other pups.

Key's Matchstick Grasshopper

Once the subject of world-famous early chromosomal research in the 1950s, the Key's matchstick grasshopper was likely a widespread species in southern NSW and Victoria before European colonisation.

Previously recorded in grassland ecosystems across the wheat-sheep belt from Victoria to Orange, unfortunately most of this habitat has now been modified or destroyed leading to the widespread decline of this little insect.

The species fell into obscurity up until very recently, where surveys revealed it's now missing from most of the sites where it was once recorded.

Key's matchstick grasshopper has a distinctly elongated body shape - hence the name - making it incredibly hard to spot among its native grassland habitat. Like many insects, it lives a fast life, They hatch in mid-summer, mature by autumn to mate in early spring before laying eggs and dying off in late spring.

Curiously, the Key's matchstick grasshopper lacks wings and it has likely impaired their ability to migrate between islands of suitable habitat, contributing to their restricted range.