Quoll crowd funding campaign 'captured imaginations' to raise $40,000

Rewilding Australia is introducing about 20 quolls to Booderee National Park at Jervis Bay later this year.

But to monitor the success of the project, and the whereabouts and wellbeing of the quolls, the conservation group needed to raise funds to purchase GPS tracking collars and other equipment for the pioneer population.

They started a crowd-funding campaign in December, which ramped up slowly.

Rewilding Australia director Rob Brewster said he had a few sleepless nights wondering if they had enough support.

"Being able to reach our target, and knowing that 100 per cent of our pioneer quolls will be able to be tracked using state-of-the-art GPS systems really gives the project team the assurance that the quolls will be properly monitored as they start their new life back on mainland Australia," Mr Brewster said.

"Feedback from the community is that they're inspired that the program to return eastern quolls to the wild on mainland Australia looks beyond just conserving what we have left in our environment, towards restoring what we have lost."

"I think bringing back a species that was a vital component of our ecosystem for so many thousands of years, and that has been missing for such a relatively short space of time captures the imagination of people. They want to see eastern quolls back where they belong. They want to experience what our grandparents were able to experience."

Mr Brewster said the vast majority of Australians were keen to get behind programs that aim to restore the environment.

"Even from a purely selfish point of view, all of us want to live in an environment that has clean air, water and soil, and interesting plants and animals that we all want to engage with, at least to some level," he said.

"With a rapidly growing population, and a few massive environmental stuff ups along the way, like the introduction of foxes, these vital systems are straining, and we need to test ways to turn things around," he said.