Original subtitles

Taronga, the zoo with the head -turning view.

But dig a little deeper.

I just planted that. And you'll discover there's a lot more to Taronga's two

zoos than meets the eye.

Hello. What's it doing?

From their devoted keeper.

Open up.

I watched him being born, so him and I have an amazing relationship.

To their first class vet team.

So just here, that's the lump.

Taronga's passionate staff.

To be laying on that dirty floor was so worth it. Are themselves a special

breed. A lot of slobber there, bud.

Ensuring nothing but the best for the animals in their care.

So impatient.

Good girl. Hang on.

On this episode... We've got quite a deep crack here.

Yeah, there's a crack here too.

..a routine medical check on a wild horse... We just don't want that split

continue up to the coronary band.

..takes a dramatic turn... She's just breath -holding a bit now. She's breath

-holding. ..with some dramatic results.

We need to get out. Everybody, pack up your stuff and get out now, please.

I'm going to wake her up.

Just monkey business?

Or female fight club.

We've had some serious injuries caused by females to our adult males.

Vampyr's new bachelor pad has sure put some noses out of joint.

Well, the girls aren't the biggest fan about the fact that they don't have

access to it. And often when he has food in here, that he'll have about 20

little faces staring at him.

And incoming.

So exciting.

Six of the best. And they've finally arrived.

Land at Taronga.

The saying goes, do a job you love and you'll never work a day in your life.

And I get paid.

For the team at Taronga, not only is every day at work different... Can I

that for me? Good girl.

But they're also making a real difference to the welfare of their

Good girl, mummy.

Out at Taronga Western Plains Zoo in Dubbo...

One species would no longer exist if it wasn't for the work done to save it.

Come on, girls!

Taki, meaning spirit, are a wild horse native to Mongolia and were almost

to extinction just a few short decades ago.

From there, our breeding programs here at Taronga Western Plain Zoo, we were

able to breed these horses back up to sustainable numbers and reintroduce them

back into the wilds of Mongolia.

There are now over 2 ,000 running free.

It's an astonishing comeback for the world's last truly wild horses that have

never been domesticated.

Naturally, in Mongolia, the Tarki would wear down their hooves on rocky outcrops

and on hard snow. All of that compact ground would really wear away their

quite nicely.

But managing their hooves here, in a different climate to where they've come

from... presents a challenge.

Here in Dubbo recently we've had so much rain that our pastures are quite wet

and so what that means is it allows the hooves to grow out quite a lot and quite

significantly faster than what we would be used to.

One horse in particular, 10 -year -old Altani, has hooves that appear to be

growing even faster than the others.

She only had a general anaesthetic to get them trimmed six months ago.

And now the vet team are back to inspect them again today.

I've worked with Altani for nearly two years now and she's one of the horses

that I find really special. They're all special to me. They've all got different

quirks. But Altani has definitely creeped her way into my heart. She's

cheeky.

It takes a team to safely perform this procedure.

Vet Elisa will be leading.

The anaesthetic being used is potentially risky for both horse and

preparation needs to be meticulous.

Our procedure this morning is going to be involving a potent opioid as part of

our anaesthetic. So what I'm drawing up at the moment is the naltrexone, which

is the reversing agent for the anaesthetic drug.

And this is for the horse.

So at the end of our procedure, we'll be able to give her this intravenously and

that will reverse the anaesthetic quite quickly. We always have that prepared in

advance so that if there was an emergency and we had to wake her up

unexpectedly, we've got that ready to go.

So that's my first drug I draw up, and now I'm going to prepare the dart for

her.

So I'll have everything ready, and then because we're using a potent opioid, we

have to take some precautions with how we handle it.

It can be quite dangerous to people, so we have to make sure that it can't

either get into our system either through a needle stick or a splash onto

mucous membrane, so eyes, nose, mouth, those sorts of things.

So I'm just going to prepare everything for my dart before we draw up the drug

that's dangerous to us.

The drug is called etorphine. It's in the same family as morphine but is 10

times stronger.

It's safe in horses, anything but in humans.

I'm wearing gloves and I'm also going to put on a face shield just in case there

was a splash because I don't want to get this drug anywhere on my face.

The gun is now safely loaded. Time for Elisa to head down to the turkey yard to

sedate her patient and get a closer look at those fast -growing hooves.

Back in Sydney, Keeper Scott is faced with a perilous problem of a different

kind.

Vampyr, the lone male squirrel monkey, may have no breeding rivals, but that

doesn't mean he's got an easy life.

with the eight females in his troop.

So Bolivian squirrel monkeys are a female -run society, and essentially

means that all the social politics in that are around the female social

dynamics. Now, this means for a male, because they're so much larger, but they

also can potentially be more aggressive, they're a threat to not only the social

standings of those females, but also all of the infants or young ones in that

community as well.

These groups in the wild, they're 300 individuals strong. So there's a lot of

males to feed. So the more males they have around their group, the more they

have to compete for that sort of food source.

So the females very much make sure that unless the male is absolutely needed for

breeding, that he stays to his own sort of areas and keeps away from them so

that their resources can only be for the female group and the males can go and

fend for themselves.

Now, this means that when you have an adult male that's trying to live in a

group, especially a large group like this, it can mean there's a lot of

aggression that comes towards them as individuals.

And here at Taronga, we've had some serious injuries caused by females to

adult males.

This is Vampyr.

So as you can see, by no means is he worried or...

under threat immediate danger but he does need a place to escape for when

situations occur so at the moment he's quite happy interacting with the female

group and with all of his sons and daughters but if we had a situation with

vampir where he was facing aggression or facing a potential risk of severe

injuries like we've had in the past we would have to take him out of that group

completely

Because these guys are so socially complex, it means that to try and

Vampyr every time we have to separate him out is a big, big deal for him. And

actually leads to more aggression and more potential wounding towards him.

So the Keepers needed a place for Vampyr to escape these attacks.

So naturally in the wild, the males live on the periphery of the group, which

essentially means they live on the outside. So they have their own choice

whether they interact with the female group or they don't interact with the

female group.

So that's what we wanted to try and replicate here for Vampyr.

Give himself a safe place that he can take himself away to, which is where we

came up with the idea of the bachelor bird.

We are this morning going to be trimming Altani.

Taki's feet.

She's got some quite overgrown front hooves particularly and some cracks and

things that we need to look at.

At Taronga Western Plain Zoo, it's suspected the wet weather and soft

led to Altani's hooves growing quicker than usual.

Because Taki are completely wild, they won't stand still for a farrier.

So Altani will need to be anaesthetised with a dart, the contents of which are

deadly to humans.

Once she's down, we will wash the dart site and we'll spray it with a blue

spray.

Keeper Ruby will identify Altani for Alisa.

It's calmer for the horses if they're kept as a group until she's

So she's at the front? Yep.

Beautiful. It's a perfect shot.

That went really well. They were nice and calm.

It's always a bit tricky when there's a group just making sure that we don't

have any other animals in the way.

But she was just perfect. She walked into just the right spot just when we

needed her. She did.

After 15 minutes, the team move in.

Come on.

Let's go.

The other Taki are moved out of the yard, now that Altani's sedative has

effect.

OK, that's in.

The darts.

We're just about to put a drip in her front leg, so Bec's going to do that

We're going to give her an infusion of a muscle relaxant.

So just to help with these little jitters, it's something that we see as

effect of the drug that we're using.

It's not harmful to her, but we just want her to be nice and relaxed and then

we'll be able to get going on the hoof care.

Just going to start and have a look at the hooves while we're getting her drip

going. You can see that this one here has got quite a large crack and that

toe is very long.

It is quite a split, yeah.

We just don't want that slit to continue up to the coronary band, so the hoof

goes from the top down, and we don't want that to go any further, so we're

to tidy up all of this and see how much damage there is in there.

They had hoped to keep Altani sedated for only an hour, but it's now clear

won't be enough time to get the job done.

Next.

This seal sustained quite a significant wound to his back.

An emergency call -out to an injured fur seal.

It's a really tough one.

Capturing the animal, bringing it into our hospital, they're all very difficult

considerations.

And some teething problems in Vampyr's new bachelor pad.

It was a bit scary at first because when it does swing back down, it does have a

bit of a whack.

A lot has gone bright since male squirrel monkey Vampyr arrived at

few years ago.

In 2020, Vampyr was introduced to our group as our breeding male and it's been

very successful breeding program.

So we've had 21 individuals born across the three years. So it's ranging from

these tiny little infants down here that are just a month old to this individual

here who's one of our two -year -olds from last year.

But when Vampyr's monkey business is not required, he's being attacked by the

females. So the keeper team has devised a cunning escape plan.

All right, so this in here, this is Vampyr's bachelor pad.

We've got lots of ropes around the place for him to be able to perch on because

he will be in here by himself. He's got his little heat lance and this bench

here is actually heated as well.

So for Vampyr, this area is his little home now. So he can have a whole area to

himself that allows him to manage himself in and out the group as he

In the wild, these guys would separate themselves outside of breeding season

because the girls can be very, very intense.

So this is his portal for freedom away from the girls. So it gives him that

little bit of an escape hatch when he needs it.

So it took Vampyr about sort of two hours to learn the actual pushing

the mechanism to get in and out of the space.

It was a bit scary at first because when it does swing back down, it does have a

bit of a whack.

I'd say it probably took him about two days to recognize that this was his own

space. And it took his female companions roughly the same amount of time to

realise they weren't invited.

Well, the girls aren't the biggest fan about the fact that they don't have

access to it, and they do constantly try to get in. Often when he has food in

here, he'll have about 20 little faces pressed up against this glass window

staring at him. So he knows very well, he's a little superstar coming in now.

But he knows very well when they're pressed up like that, if he's on this

make sure you don't go too close to it. Otherwise, they can get in to get to

you.

Which poses the million -dollar question, just what is stopping the

getting in?

Nearly every day, injured animals are dropped at the door of Taronga's

Hospital for treatment.

But today, Larry and Jeff are doing a site visit of a patient a bit too large

and dangerous to bring in.

This seal, it looks like a large male long -nosed fur seal, and it's got a

wound. What we'll go and do is just have a look at it, because if it's a large

seal, like an adult male long -nosed fur seal, it's going to be a lot of work to

do anything to try and capture it or anything, maybe impossible.

So let's just go and see what's happening with it.

And to make their visit even harder, the injured seal is in a rather

inconvenient spot.

That's a big boat, isn't it?

Jolly big boat.

Which requires a special clearance to get anywhere near it.

This is a surprise. I actually wasn't expecting that there was going to be a

ship down here.

Essentially what we're waiting for is just to get permission from the Navy to

actually go down there and have a look at the seal.

From what Larry can see from a distance, this seal has had a nasty run -in with

a boat. The seal's sustained quite a significant wound to his back, which in

itself, I've seen photos of it, and I can just see it through these binoculars

as well.

What do we do?

It's a really tough one.

Capturing the animal, bringing it into our hospital, they're all very difficult

considerations. They will be very hard to maintain in our hospital and treat

We'd have to anaesthetise him, but of course...

There's risk that he would just jump off there into the water and if he's got

the drugs on board he might just drown.

Obviously if it's very thick and the injury is more extensive than we can

from here then it may need to be euthanised but we don't know at this

time. We just need to get more information.

With permission now granted.

Larry and a small team can finally start inching towards their patient.

So maybe just myself and someone from National Parks go to the inn to have a

close look.

Because if all of us traipse down there, it might just bugger off.

So, you know what I mean? And that's why we don't want that to happen.

This lush island habitat has been specially created for Taronga's 26

squirrel monkeys.

But for the lone adult male, Vampyr, sharing it with eight sometimes

breeding females is far from ideal.

We needed a solution to manage Vampyr in the group long term without him getting

too much aggression and being targeted and getting significantly wounded.

So we talked to a lot of different institutions around Australia but also

internationally and what we came back with was microchip cat flaps.

It's the perfect security system for Vampyr's newly built bachelor pad.

All of our animals here at Taronga have microchips as identification numbers,

and they get that when they're quite young.

So the actual cat flap mechanism here, it only activates the head microchip,

which is just between his two shoulder blades there. So when he gets about this

close to the cat flap, these little mechanisms here...

They open, and then he can pull that flap open himself, come in, and then it

shuts behind him so that no one else can follow him in.

And it didn't take Vampyr very long to get the hang of it.

What he'll do is when his sons are in trouble or even if they're just hanging

out outside, he'll actually open it manually himself to let his sons in and

he'll shut it back quickly again to make sure none of the girls can get inside.

So he's actually using this space to form his own little natural bachelor

So the ball is now well and truly in Vampyr's court as to how much time he

spends with the females.

So 24 -7 he has access to as much social drama as he wants.

So if it's too much drama, he can take himself away from that.

But if he wants a little bit more, he wants a little bit more of that drama or

wants to cause some drama, he has a choice that he can go out and do that.

for him, his welfare is so much better off because of how he's being managed.

And it's simulating exactly how these animals have managed themselves in the

wild, which is exactly what we want to do for them here in this environment.

Coming up... She's just breath -holding a bit now. She's breath -holding. A

medical emergency in Dubbo... If she's breath -holding, we need to get out.

..brings this procedure to an abrupt end.

Everybody, pack up your stuff and get out now, please.

Just over a kilometre from Taronga Zoo, a large fur seal has sought refuge on a

wharf with a wound on its back, possibly from a boat strike.

Senior vet Larry and a small team...

have just been granted permission by the Navy to walk out for a closer look.

We've had a lot of reports from members of the public, also wildlife care groups

like WIRES have been calling, and then ORCA, which is a great organisation that

assists with monitoring seals and whales and dolphins, and they've given us a

call as well.

But today National Parks gave us a call, and National Parks have jurisdiction

over all these animals, and so people are concerned.

Weighing up to 100 kilos, This wild creature is best observed from a

So Larry uses binoculars to get a close -up look.

But even that doesn't go down too well with the patient.

That last one was a bit of a...

Back off moment?

Bit feisty.

Yeah, he didn't like that last bit.

Yeah, yeah, it's interesting.

He's not in terrible condition.

He's moving around.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I mean, I, like, wouldn't intervene now at this point in time. I mean, you know,

to be honest, like, there's not much we could do anyway.

I mean, if we're going to intervene, then it would have to be to euthanise

because...

to try and treat him. Can you imagine that seal, like, in a hospital

It'd be so dangerous.

But generally, like, a deep skin wound, massive skin wounds like that, heal

really well in seals.

It's a challenging situation, but I don't think the wound's a major issue

him. And certainly with his attitude, I think that's good to see.

You know, usually, if they're thick, really thick, they wouldn't do that.

I think he's just resting, you know.

recovering from whatever injury or however he sustained the injury and with

hopefully he'll just recover.

For the next few weeks National Parks will keep a close eye out for him

throughout the harbour.

If he hauls up in any other locations around the area we'll do another what we

call a sit rep, another check on the animal and we'll do a well -being check

just to make sure that the condition hasn't deteriorated any further.

Per Taronga's advice, we're pretty happy with the condition that he's in at the

moment and hopefully just a couple more days rest and he'll be on his way.

Out at Taronga Western Plains Zoo, Autani, the Taki horse, is under what's

called a GA, or general anaesthetic, to investigate her fast hoof growth.

It is always nerve -wracking to watch some of the animals go through their

procedures, especially when you know that this might not be the only one that

they'll have.

After looking at her hooves, she'll probably need multiple GAs. So for us,

always concerned that they'll make a 100 % recovery.

Everybody safe?

Yep. Stand behind me.

As well as what Elisa can see...

The X -rays will assist diagnosing the cause of the hoof overgrowth.

There's quite a deep crack here.

There's a crack here too.

It's absolutely crucial these deep cracks don't spread further up the hoof.

So this is a little bit like trimming your fingernails, where this is your

fingernail here.

The hooves go down from the top.

This is a hard keratin material.

The first part of the job needs to be done by hand.

We need to get in there and trim all of that out and get back to healthy tissue.

So I'm going to use a little rotary tool that's just going to very carefully go

a bit deeper in there.

While all this is going on, Nurse Katrina is constantly monitoring

vital signs.

And worryingly...

Her temperature is now higher than it should be.

She's just getting a little bit warm. One of the effects of this drug is that

they actually lose their ability to regulate their temperature.

We use the water just to cool her down.

Once she's awake, then she gets back her ability to regulate her temperature,

then she'll be fine.

That's good. Well done. Yep, 38 .7 temperature.

Is it 38 .7?

Yeah, it's coming down quite a lot.

Well done.

Altani's temperature has dropped and is back in the safe range.

But she's now been under for more than an hour and the work on her hooves is

nowhere near finished.

How long have we been since her dart?

It's been about an hour and 20 minutes since darting.

We don't want to, yeah, don't want her down for too long. Also, just prolonged

anaesthesia, you just increase your risk of complications and so the shortest

amount of time they can be down, the better, basically. Once we can get the

done, wake them up.

That's the best thing for the animal.

You can see there I've had to take away a fair bit of hoof wall just to get to

the bottom of some of this diseased tissue.

Alisa, she's just breath -holding a bit now. She's breath -holding? Yeah.

Breath -holding is another worrying development.

Now Alisa may have no choice but to stop the procedure immediately.

Go on, darling.

The opening of Muridea, Australia is a few short weeks away and will feature 14

native animal species.

Dingoes Kep Kep and Waradah are already here, as are the 20 koalas that will be

eye -level on the canopy walk.

Hey, how are you going? Good.

And this morning, fauna supervisor Mel is here to oversee the arrival of six...

Weary kangaroo island female roos.

If you can reverse in, we're going to go into those gates there.

Who've just done the long haul from South Australia.

So exciting.

We've been working towards this for a month and they've finally arrived.

These crates are specially designed for macropods like them.

They're quite juvenile, so it's a good start. It means they're a bit more

adaptable to change at a young age.

And they're smaller, so they're lighter, which is great for us.

At the moment, we're just putting them in what we call the sticks yard.

It's a good yard that's away from a lot of the other exhibits and appropriate

for quarantine.

They've got grass, open air.

And, yeah, isolation, which is what you need.

They'll be in here for approximately three weeks until they're cleared of any

nasties that might come into the rest of the zoo.

Just sit around and put in front of this one here.

Diseases can take a while to incubate, especially during stressful times, so

we'll monitor them during this time for a lot of, you know, the big parasite

life cycle that we want to look out for.

The next step after quarantine is moving into the enclosure.

What's your plan? So I'll release these first three, one at a time, and then

bring the box, we'll put it to the side, and then we'll release the following

three. Just the longest stretch of open air is there.

And is everyone going to be... Everyone's going to be out of there,

from probably a couple of us.

We've called Frances, our vet on site today, who's been across a lot of the

work. She's been in contact with the vets from the facility previous to here,

and that way she can monitor them for anything that she's ever seen in

macropods as well.

make a nice visual assessment before we start collecting um fecal samples and

making sure that we can rule out any diseases that we could be worried about

thanks all right you ready one two three

the

large injured fur seal thought to have been struck by a boat propeller, has now

disappeared back into Sydney Harbour.

There's no way of knowing where he's gone.

But that won't be the case when they release this smaller rescued seal called

Skip.

He was found up in Skip Point on the southern end of Fraser Island, Lugari,

Queensland. And he was in really poor condition when he was found.

And so he was taken into care at SeaWorld and they looked after him for a

months. And then we decided to release him down around Sydney.

So Skip was flown down here to Taronga and we fitted a satellite tracker to

which is a small unit designed specifically for putting on sims. And we

by using a glue to attach the tracker to the fur and that tracker will fall off

when he molts.

Until then, Ben and fellow researchers will be able to follow Skip's every

It's part of a major research effort called Seabirds to Seascapes.

Our Seabirds to Seascapes project is looking at the biodiversity of marine

along the New South Wales coast and we're particularly interested in the

penguins and the seals.

And what we're really interested in is how are they interacting with the human

landscape that we have now.

Skip doesn't know it, but he is about to play a big part in that research.

We're lucky enough to borrow a New South Wales police boat that we put him onto

and we took him a couple of kilometres out off Sydney Head. It was a fairly

bumpy day when we took him out there, but he took it in his stride. He stood

the transom of the boat and sort of looked at the ocean for a second. I

you can imagine, he sort of faced with the ocean. He sort of hesitated for a

second and then...

After a few seconds, he dived in and he swam away from the boat. He popped up,

he looked back at us, and then he turned around and he swam off.

He's a little seal in a big, wide ocean.

But where did Skip go?

The answer is incredible.

Six female kangaroo island roos have arrived after a 14 -hour drive from

Australia. So exciting!

This one here.

Time to let three of them out of their travel crates.

One, two, three.

There's a good girl. There's a good girl.

Hi. Who's that?

All right, sweetheart.

There we go.

You are a little he.

You're very cute.

Hi, little one. Hey. No.

Oh, God, they're tiny. Oh, they're so small.

They're very small.

They're so pretty. They're so pretty.

We've got so far three nice -looking, quite small, young female K .I.

come out of their boxes.

They've come out nice and quietly, which is fantastic.

We want them to stay nice and quiet and calm like that, and hopefully they'll

have enjoyed their trip, and welcome to the rain in Sydney.

They're looking good.

Nice and small and compact.

So far...

So good.

Hopefully releasing the second lot is just as smooth.

Calm, slowly.

We've got a big, we've got a adult one in this box. There we go.

Hi there.

Hi, big girl.

One more to come out.

Hey, shy one.

Are you OK? Hey, girl.

Just let her come out when she wants to. Make sure she's all right.

Yeah, she's thinking about it.

Is she facing the wrong way? Yeah.

Can you open the other end of the pot? No, there's no end.

There's only one end.

She's got her back curved in this corner.

Pretty hot.

Basically, her tail's over here.

Is she lying down? Yeah, she's lying on her front.

She's got pretty wet hind legs.

Got more to be stressed about being an adult.

Do you want me to go in there and help stand her up?

Everyone's hoping the roo will come out on her own.

But she's definitely not keen.

You're pretty.

Out at Taronga Western Plain Zoo, the team have been working for over an hour

trim the hooves of Taki horse, Altani, who's been sedated the entire time.

You can see there I've had to take away a fair bit of hoof wall just to get to

the bottom of some of this diseased tissue.

Her hooves are worse than expected, so it's taking much longer than anyone

anticipated. She's just breath -holding a bit now. She's breath -holding? Yeah.

That's still good.

Go on, darling.

Breath -holding.

indicates Altani might be too deeply anaesthetised.

Come on.

And, just like a human, a horse's brain starved of oxygen for more than a few

minutes could result in brain damage.

How are you going with yours?

I'm not done with that, but if she's breath -holding, we need to get out.

Everybody, pack up your stuff and get out now, please.

There's a breath. Still a hoof. She's taking a breath.

Do it.

No, I'm going to wake her up.

It's not worth the risk.

It's not worth the risk giving her more ketamine or anything.

So we're going to wake her up.

Before the procedure began, vet Elisa prepared a drug that will quickly

the powerful anaesthetic. Yeah, the front I'm not finished with, but it's

risky. She needs to administer it now and rouse Altani to get her breathing

normally again.

The reason that we use these drugs is that they are very effective.

at anaesthetising our hoofed animals and they have the advantage of being

completely reversible.

So one of the important aspects of a procedure like this, we want to have her

up, fully recovered and reintegrated back with her herd as soon as possible.

So being an opioid, it has got an antagonist drug that we can give

at the end of the procedure that's going to have her standing on her feet and

back with her herd really quickly.

Are you happy?

Yeah, she's lightening up. As the herd watches on...

Altani slowly comes to.

Coming up, honey. Good girl.

Up you get. Good girl.

So she's calling to her... You can hear her. She's calling to her herd mates,

and they're calling back to her.

But we just need to make sure that she's completely steady on her feet before we

reintroduce her.

It's a huge relief she's recovered so quickly.

But more investigation... And work on those hooves will need to be done soon.

She has got what's called white line disease, which is a separation between

hoof wall and the sole, and that's something that we're going to need to

top of. So it's basically infection, bacteria and fungi that can get up in

between the two parts of the hoof and actually cause some disease in there. So

it's something we need to keep on top of, trimming out and get that back to

healthy hoof wall growth.

By mid -afternoon, Altani is back with the herd.

Fully recovered from this morning's adventures.

Altani's looking really well. She's walking and running around with the rest

the herd, which is exactly what we would like.

I just was out there before giving her a feed as well, and she's happily eating

away, so that's exactly what we want from her today.

Back in Sydney, there's some equally important conservation work being done

save an endangered species.

Only it's all happening behind the scenes.

And it's not causing the Taronga team any heart palpitations.

So this species in here is the northern krabby frog.

And it's really one of the most iconic frogs in Australia.

Yet they're one of our most endangered as well.

Unfortunately for this species, they're heavily impacted by a disease that

arrived in Australia back in the 70s called chytrid fungus.

Fungus that infects the skin of the frog, effectively what it does is throws

the electrolyte balance of the frog and causes them to have a cardiac arrest.

They are critically endangered.

Their numbers are right on the brink of extinction.

They could be gone as little as five to ten years from the wild.

So the goal of this program here is to be able to breed the species to produce

offspring for release.

And down in Brindabella National Park, where these ones are from, we released a

combination of both eggs and of frogs to help sustain the populations there and

keep them picking over.

So far, things have been going pretty well.

But Michael is only just getting started.

As we're hitting that summer period, it's actually the breeding period for

these. So we're actually going to start introducing males to the breeding tank.

We have 400 northern crawly frogs. There's quite a few individuals.

And the way we tell them all apart is by the unique pattern.

So their belly pattern is a series of dots, which we'll see in a moment, and

their back pattern is stripes, but they've all got slight differences, kind

like a fingerprint.

So for every one of the animals in our collection, we've got images of their

back, images of their belly, and we can work out exactly which frog's which just

by looking at their unique patterning.

And it's quite distinctive, no two are alike.

So this boy's pattern matches this one on the table, and I can flip him over

too, just to have a little look at his belly.

just to ensure it matches the belly pattern as well.

I struggle to tell giraffes apart, but one out of 400 frogs I can fish.

Look at their little back legs.

They're only tiny. They're not big and muscular, not made for jumping large

distances. These little guys, they just walk.

And soon, around 400 of them will be testing out those little legs when

released back to the Brindabella mountain range on the edge of the Snowy

Mountains in New South Wales.

to help repopulate the region.

Fortunately for us, these frogs live for a long time. We've got some just over

to the right here, which are 18 years of age. So they can live certainly up to

20 years, and who knows, they're still breeding as of last year, so who knows

how long they'll live for.

Back prior to chytrid fungus, this species would have been up in the

in northern Kosciuszko, essentially in the millions.

And today we're left with as few as a few thousand left in the wild, so their

numbers are really critical.

Next. If we just slide her to where she goes, that leaves out.

The waiting game continues.

Nobody's sort of in her face.

And mystery solved.

More than 60 days now since we released him.

Skip's secret travels are a secret no more.

He's done over 4 ,000 kilometres.

The Taronga team are thrilled at the arrival this morning of six young female

kangaroos that will be part of the Nura Deer Australia experience.

Hi, big girl.

Five have come straight out of their travel boxes, but the last one won't

out. One more to come out.

Hey, shy one.

And vet Francis is a little worried.

Okay, maybe.

I hear something.

She's trying to get up.

Yeah, you need to help her up, Francis.

Yeah, I think so. Make it and then pull her out a little bit. Just be careful

she doesn't kick you. The other option is... She's turning around.

She's getting there.

That just worries me. Yeah, it does. It's goodness.

All right, sleepy.

If we attend this and just... Slide her to where she can get her back legs out.

She might be able to get her forelimbs.

Ready? Two, three.

But nobody's sort of in her face.

No.

We should start gliding through.

She might be scared when she starts.

Moving forward.

That's okay. Moving forward.

Forelimbs are down below.

There we go.

Just wait with this up like this. There you go.

It's okay.

And everybody just really quiet and stay.

She's a bit wobbly, she might be a bit sore.

I was a little bit worried about the slightly bigger females. Obviously

a big change for these animals coming here, but I'm quite happy actually with

the way that she's come out. She's steady on her feet and she's alert and

looking around, but there's no obvious signs of grass or anything like that. I

think they've been pretty quiet on the trip over here.

and it looks like they've actually travelled really well, so it's great

So special.

Got a little crew together.

Travelling in a mob is always really important for kangaroos when they're in

danger. They help to confuse predators and things, so being together again is

probably really important as part of this process.

They'll be here for the next three weeks.

We'll monitor them and make sure that they're as healthy as possible,

them, hopefully.

And the next stop is near Edea. Very exciting.

It's been a few months since Skip the Seal was released off Sydney Heads with

satellite tracker attached.

Today, Ben is sharing with Marine Supervisor Brad... Just where Skip's

adventures have taken him. We released him out off Sydney Head and straight

he jumped into the Australian current. He powered down south.

That current pushes south at about seven kilometres an hour.

A dead straight path down to Victoria.

Right down out off the eastern end of Bass Strait. And then he headed in

His first stop off on land was this little tiny place called Craggy Island

the north of Flinders Island.

And he's had a few days rest there and checked out the north coast of Tasmania.

And then he's gone back around the top of Flinders Island and headed south

again. And this is really cool. He's found this...

The sea mountain at the East Tasman Plateau, and he spent a few days fishing

there. That's amazing. And do you know what the length of time is that he's

in between periods of rest on land? More than 60 days now since we released him,

and he's only had about four or five days on land.

Impressive. Yeah, for a little... Incredible.

He's got 19 kilos, or he was 19 kilos when we released him. He's probably a

heavier now that he's out there feeding up, and he's done...

over 4 ,000 kilometres and gone right down south, about 700 kilometres south

Tasmania. It's incredible.

You know, so much effort goes into the rehab of these animals, and when you

release them, you're just sort of hoping they do well off the boat, but by

putting the satellite tracker on them, we can actually see what they do and

where they go, and the fact that he's done this 4 ,000 -kilometre trip so far

and he's still going is incredible.

The tracker is likely to fall off soon when Skip moults. But the insights his

travels have provided already are priceless.

It's really hard to protect something that we don't know about.

So we have to understand these animals in order to understand the threat

to them and protect them and ensure a shared future.