For the first time in generations, baby platypuses are being born in the Hacking River. UNSW Sydney scientists confirmed in late May that the reintroduced platypus population in Royal National Park — Australia's oldest national park — has grown to 20 known individuals, including a new subadult male hatched on site during the latest breeding season.
The milestone, announced after a fresh round of surveys, marks a turning point for a recovery project that began in 2023 with just 10 founder animals. The team has now translocated 17 platypuses in total, with the latest batch — males Absinthe and Duckie and females Hydra and Dawn — released into the Hacking River in May.
From reintroduction to recovery
"To capture males from the original release still in great condition, alongside a young male hatched here in the park, tells us this is no longer just a reintroduction — it is a recovering population," said lead researcher Associate Professor Gilad Bino, who heads UNSW's Platypus Conservation Initiative.
The project is run jointly by UNSW's Centre for Ecosystem Science, the Platypus Conservation Initiative, NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service, Taronga Conservation Society Australia and WWF-Australia. Platypuses had vanished from the park's waterways decades ago, lost to a combination of habitat decline, pollution and disease.
Each released animal carries a small radio tag so researchers can monitor where it settles, how it disperses and whether it pairs up. The most exciting confirmation came last year, when DNA tests proved that a male from the founding cohort named Prometheus had fathered Gili — the first juvenile born in the park since reintroduction began. With this season's new subadult, the population is now producing a second generation on its own.
Visitors are spotting them too
Park rangers say sightings have ticked up sharply along the Hacking River, with bushwalkers and kayakers reporting glimpses of the secretive, duck-billed monotremes at dawn and dusk. The team is asking the public to keep logging encounters through citizen science platforms to help map how far the animals are spreading.
Adding new genetic lines was also a deliberate choice. "Adding Absinthe, Duckie, Hydra and Dawn will strengthen both the numbers and the genetic diversity underpinning its long-term resilience," Bino said. The researchers plan to release three more adults into the Hacking River in 2027 to round out the final stage of the program.
Why it matters
Platypuses are listed as Near Threatened on the IUCN Red List, and recent climate-driven droughts and bushfires have squeezed populations across eastern Australia. Conservationists hope the Royal National Park model — translocating animals from healthy donor populations into restored habitat, then leaving them to disperse and breed — can be replicated in other rivers where the species has disappeared.
For now, the message from the Hacking River is simple: the platypuses are home, they're raising young, and a part of Australia's wildlife heritage that had been quietly written off is being written back into the landscape.
