In a historic moment in Australian conservation history, two giant, guardian dogs are protecting a recently released population of 20 gravely threatened bandicoots, by ignoring them. With a little help from the dogs and some sheep in the grasslands of Skipton in Victoria’s southwest, the embattled native species of Eastern Barred Bandicoots have a chance to come off the threatened species list. Instead of bonding with critically endangered marsupials, researchers are teaching the Maremma dogs to leave them alone, as part of Zoo Victoria’s Guardian Dog Program, which protects the bandicoots’ territory and the flock of sheep from cats and foxes. “The sheep, dogs, and the bandicoots will all live in the same grassland. Then the foxes realise that that’s a dog’s territory and they stay out,” Guardian Dog Program Coordinator David Williams said. “The dogs are not bonded directly to the bandicoots as they are solitary and nocturnal–so they do not …