Brush-tailed Rabbit-rat

A medium-sized nocturnal rodent, the brush-tailed rabbit-rat is characterized by soft grey-brown fur, large ears, and a distinctive bushy, white-tipped tail. It forages on the ground and in low vegetation for seeds, fruit, and green shoots, sheltering by day in tree hollows, hollow logs, or dense grass tussocks. As a seed disperser and prey item for owls, quolls, and snakes, it plays a modest but meaningful role in maintaining the structure of the savanna woodlands it inhabits.

Historically distributed across much of northern Australia, the species is now restricted to a fragmented range across the Northern Territory's coastal regions and several offshore islands, including the Tiwi Islands and parts of the Kimberley in Western Australia, with populations also recorded in Papua New Guinea. It occupies tropical savanna woodland, coastal monsoon forest, and adjacent vegetated dune and shoreline habitats.

The species' decline is driven primarily by altered fire regimes—particularly frequent, extensive late dry-season wildfires that remove the understorey shelter and food resources it depends on—and by predation from introduced feral cats. These pressures have caused local extinctions across much of its former mainland range, with island populations now considered strongholds.

Conservation efforts include strategic early dry-season burning programs designed to create fine-grained fire mosaics, feral cat control and monitoring on key islands, and population surveys to track distribution and abundance. Some island populations, notably on the Tiwi Islands, remain a focus of targeted management due to their relative security from mainland threats.

The population trend remains downward, and without sustained fire management and effective control of introduced predators, further contraction of the species' range is likely, particularly on the Australian mainland.