Save the bilby and bounce the bunny this Easter

The cute animals face ongoing threats and their numbers continue to decline.

CHOICE: Quartz the bilby at the Ipswich Nature Centre. The centre is urging people to buy chocolate bilbies to raise vital funds. Picture: Cordell Richardson

THE Ipswich Nature Centre is supporting efforts to replace the bunny rabbit with the native bilby as the national symbol for Easter.

The centre is currently home to three bilbies; Quartz, Tanami and their joey Mudlo, who was born last year.

With an estimated wild population in Queensland of between 400 and 600, the cute critters face ongoing threats from habitat change as well as feral cats, foxes and rabbits and numbers continue to decline.

Bilbies are hunted by red foxes and feral cats and compete for food and burrows with rabbits.

They were common throughout the country until European settlement and occupied more than 70 per cent of mainland Australia but 90 per cent of the previous population has since been lost.

The centre is urging people to buy bilby-shaped chocolate produced by Pink Lady Chocolates this Easter, with 30 cents from every purchase going towards the Save the Bilby Fund.

Senior zoologist Nicole Richards said the centre is part of a national breeding program for the animals, which is doing crucial work to sustain its population.

"The bilbies are threatened and they're very important for the Australian ecosystem," she said.

"Whereas the rabbit destroys the ecosystem, the bilby actually builds it up.

"Part of the breeding program is breeding up a captive population for eduction and the program is also starting to release them into areas that are predator proof to help build up a wild population.

"One of our triplets (born in 2017) went to Mount Gibson Wildlife Sanctuary (in Western Australia) and others have gone to different facilities, such as in Charleville."

The bilbies are getting plenty of attention at the moment with a particularly busy school holiday period, which is being contributed to the centre's closure across February and March.