Chester Zoo: Rare baby wallaby emerges from mother's pouch

Chester is part of a conservation breeding programme to help prevent them from extinction

Zookeepers have shared the "magical moment" a baby wallaby emerged from its mother's pouch for the first time.

The dusky pademelon joey was just the size of a jelly bean when it was born at Chester Zoo.

The marsupial was growing inside the pouch for six months before the moment it emerged was photographed.

Zookeeper Megan Carpenter said seeing the joey take its first peek at the world had "brought us a huge amount of joy".

"It'll be a few weeks until the new baby fully emerges and is hopping around and exploring all by itself," she said.

"That's when we'll be able to determine if it's male or female and give it a fitting name."

The species is vulnerable to extinction in the wild and can only be found on three tiny islands in South East Asia

Chester Zoo said the decline of dusky pademelons, also referred to as dusky wallabies, had mostly gone under the radar.

This is because little is known about the species that is only found in the wild in the forests of New Guinea and some smaller nearby islands in Indonesia.

The population has declined by 30% in the last two decades as a result of trapping, hunting and deforestation to make way for rice farming and logging, Chester Zoo said.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature has officially listed the species as vulnerable to extinction and has recommended close monitoring of the remaining wild population to ensure its long-term survival on New Guinea.

Chester Zoo is currently one of just four zoos in the UK caring for dusky pademelons and only 56 live in zoos across the whole of Europe.

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