The greater bilby has become a celebrated Australian Easter icon but sadly, bilbies have disappeared from 80 per cent of the vast, arid landscape they once called home.

Now classified nationally as vulnerable, the fate of the greater bilby is hanging in the balance with its relative, the lesser bilby, now completely extinct.

Space to play or pause, M to mute, left and right arrows to seek, up and down arrows for volume. Listen Duration: 4 minutes 46 seconds 4 m 46 s Dr Katherine Tuft says they have released more than 1,000 bilbies in the last 20 years. ( ABC Rural: Courtney Fowler ) Download 8.7 MB

However, groups like Arid Recovery have been working to re-establish bilby populations in a predator-proof fenced reserve and breeding facility in outback South Australia.

Great country for bilbies to burrow

General manager Katherine Tuft said since establishing 20 years ago, the organisation had helped release more than 1,000 bilbies into the Arid Recovery Reserve.

"A little under 20 years ago we released 20 bilbies into our reserve north of Roxby Downs, with the hopes of bringing them back to this part of the desert they'd gone extinct from," she said.

"We have this lovely mix of sand hill country, which is great for bilbies to build burrows in and there's lots of food for them to eat, so it's a great habitat for them.

"They're doing really well now [and] we have over 1,000 of them running around in our reserve.

"They've got 60 square kilometres to make a home in and they're thriving."

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Dr Tuft said the rapid decline in the national bilby population was largely due to predation by feral cats and foxes.

"The main thing that we've had to do is fence out all the feral predators that are the main risks for bilbies," she said.

"We've had to remove feral cats and foxes from the reserve and put up a big fence that keeps them out and maintain that over the years.

"There's other factors at play. Where the landscapes have opened up by fire or by excessive grazing, it can make it a bit easier for the cats and foxes to hunt animals like bilbies.

"[But] once the bilbies were put in, they do perfectly well in the absence of those predators."

Bilbies have essential role in ecosystem

Dr Tuft said bilbies were essential to arid ecosystems, playing an important role in the restoration of soil and the regrowth of vegetation.

"They're burrowing animals and they often dig for grubs every night to find their food, so they're turning over tonnes of soil a year," she said.

"We've found that actually improves the soil health, it puts more carbon and nitrogen into the soil and that encourages plants to germinate.

"So we've seen a transformation in the ecosystem."

Bilbies, like this baby born in Alice Springs, are thriving within the Aric Recovery reserve (file photo). ( Supplied: NT Department of Natural Resources )

Dr Tuft said in the future they hoped to develop more effective feral cat and fox control techniques, as well as train bilbies to be more predator savvy in the wild.

Learning to live alongside predators

She said the Tackling Prey Naivety project with the University of New South Wales (UNSW) had already seen positive results, with bilbies able to survive and breed while living alongside low densities of cats in one of Arid Recovery's experimental enclosures.

"We're working to train bilbies to be better about dealing with feral predators, to up their awareness of them and the sort of behaviours they need to avoid getting eaten," she said.

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"We have a number of these bilbies that have been trained to deal with feral cats by living alongside them in other controlled ways.

"We'll be releasing them into a new area and testing how well their new skills protect them."

Scattered populations of greater bilbies still remain in the Tanami, Gibson and Great Sandy deserts, the Pilbara and Kimberley regions, the Mitchell grasslands in south-west Queensland.

Dr Tuft said ultimately, projects like the Arid Recovery Reserve offered hope for bilby populations to increase outside of protected sites across Australia.

"There is some hope because there are some populations across the country that are hanging on outside of fences," she said.

"So a lot of the research that we do is geared at figuring out how we can give bilbies the edge and tackle the feral cats and foxes so that they can thrive outside."

Dr Tuft said Arid Recovery would celebrate 20 years of bilby conservation on Easter Sunday.

"I think they're absolutely intriguing animals and they're a great comparison to the Easter rabbit," she said.

"It's a really clever transfer from a feral animal to a native one.

"When you meet one up close, they've got these fantastic pointy noses, really delicate faces and lovely soft grey fur.

"They're just spectacular animals to see."