It took just 60 years for the red fox, one of Australia’s most devastating predators, to colonise the continent | Sean Tomlinson and Damien Fordham for the Conversation

The rapid spread of the invasive species offers clues to how we might prevent future extinctions of native animals

To a newly arrived red fox, the abundant rolling grasslands and swamps of Wadawurrung Country, around what is now called Port Phillip Bay in Victoria, must have seemed like a predator's paradise.

This landscape was filled with small native marsupials and birds, and free of European wolves or bears that usually kept fox numbers in check.