Several endangered species are surviving perilously on an outback reserve teeming with feral cats.

A study conducted by Bush Heritage Australia and Flinders University focused on Boolcoomatta Reserve, a 150-year-old former sheep station in South Australia, 100 kilometres west of Broken Hill.

Emily Mathews sets up a feral cat lure and motion sensor camera on Boolcoomatta Reserve. ( Supplied: Dianne Davies )

Using 24-hour motion-sensitive cameras placed on 60 sites across the 63,000-hectare property, researchers monitored passing wildlife over a period of 45 days.

"We got some pretty surprising results," said Emily Mathews, a science graduate from Flinders University.

"There were 95 individual cats identified.

"A lot of them were very, very large — up to a metre long."

The research team trapped 15 cats and analysis of their stomach contents revealed bittersweet news.

"The cats' stomachs had a range of bird species, reptile and mammal species," Ms Mathews said.

"We were also able to identify a new reptile that hadn't been seen on the property before — a legless lizard species.

Bush Heritage science intern Emily Mathews holds an Eyrean earless dragon. ( Supplied: Dianne Davies )

"That was pretty exciting for the property, but not so exciting that it had been found in a cat's stomach."

The feral cat numbers are all the more concerning as the study revealed two endangered species in the area: the yellow-footed rock wallaby, which was hunted to near extinction until the early 20th century; and the plains wanderer, a quail-like bird whose tendency to run rather than fly from predators makes it particularly vulnerable to feral cats.

"We've had some good news as far as the yellow-footed rock wallaby is concerned," Glenn Norris from Bush Heritage Australia said.

"We have a young male and a young female that have taken up a nice little spot at a place we call Eagle Rock, which is quite a distance from the closest colony at Bimbowrie.

A yellow-footed rock wallaby is spotted on Bush Heritage's Boolcoomatta Reserve in South Australia. ( Supplied: Bush Heritage )

"We believe them to be establishing a new colony.

"The fact that the young male has gone looking through some different habitat types and he has travelled so far, up to about 12 kilometres to get to Eagle Rock with a young female closely behind him, is very exciting."

Equally exciting, Mr Norris said, was the recording of plains wanderers.

"We knew that we had a population of plains wanderers here due to previous surveys — we've had incidental observations over the 11 years that we've had Boolcoomatta under management," he said.

"But we've now had 10 new recordings over the three-month period.

"That gives us a lot of hope and it'll certainly provide a catalyst for some more conservation measures for that critically-endangered species, which only exists in Australia."

A plains wanderer captured and released at one of the new transect sites in Bindarrah, south of Boolcoomatta. ( Supplied: Emily Mathews )

While the discoveries have delighted researchers, the proximity of so many feral cats has forced a rethink of the measures used to combat predators.

"We knew that we were having a very high impact on wild dogs and foxes across Boolcoomatta," Mr Norris said.

"But cats are a little bit more cryptic and difficult to manage.

"We knew they were high in numbers and our control efforts need to be lifted.

"However, detecting the 95 individuals across those cameras was quite an eye-opener for us."

Mr Norris said the recent three-month study had reinforced the existence of Bush Heritage’s feral cat program.

The team is working with the management of Boolcoomatta Reserve to protect the natural fauna from the pest-eradication processes.

"We've closed off the area at the moment, just so we can disturb them as little as possible while we're continuing our broad scale threat mitigation program," Mr Norris said.

"It's on a bit of a knife edge, I guess."