(Hello!) With an endearing face and a thick fur, the Matschies tree kangaroos of Papua New Guinea（巴布新几内亚） are only found on the island Huon Penisular and they're endangered. Threats include a growing human population and subsistence hunting. Tree kangaroos for a long time have been part of the local diet.

 

They're difficult to study because of the remoteness of their habitat and they spend most of their lives high in the rainforest canopy, 70 to 100 feet above the ground.

 

Just getting to their home isn't easy. First, the area is inaccessible by vehicle, so researchers need a small plane, landing on a bumping air strip in the village of Yawan. Then, it’s a two-day hike in the dense forest, up and down steep mountain ridges. Even once you get there, they're extremely difficult to find. Local hunters and trackers provide the critical skills to locate these elusive（难以找到的） animals.

 

Doctor Lisa Dabek is the director of the tree kangaroo conservation program, based at Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle. (- Oh, and then she'll hold. - Yes. - Cos that's what she did when she came down, right? She sort of goes through... )She studied this endangered marsupial（有袋目哺乳动物） for more than 20 years.

 

"Tree kangaroos spend most of their time high up in the trees, and so we are not able to see what they are doing up there."

 

That's why she's asked for the help of the National Geographic crittercam .

 

"This crittercam for the tree kangaroo is completely new. We've been working with National Geographic for the last few years, trying to figure out a way to have a small enough crittercam to put on a tree kangaroo."

 

It takes a team of experts for this project: scientists, veterinarians and the local hunters.

 

"These are the local land owners, who used to hunt tree kangaroos, but now they're helping us with our research. So they are the best people to find the tree kangaroos in the forest. Tree kangaroos, really hide in a tree. So you might be able to see that the moss（苔藓） on the trees is the very same color as the tree kangaroos themselves. And tree kangaroos tend to hide in the moss. They look like plush（绒毛的） toys up in the branches, but they're very well-adapted for the cloud forests, with the thick fur and then they have the long claws for climbing the trees and then they have their long tail for balancing themselves. But they can also leap down from the trees onto the ground and not hurt themselves."