The Lord Howe Island Stick Insect bounced back from a remnant population of 24 individuals once rediscovered and taken to a larger habitat free from the predation that extirpated them from their original island.
> In 2014, an unauthorised climbing team sighted live stick insects near the summit of Ball’s Pyramid, in a thicket of sedge plants rooted in very thin soils at an altitude of 500 metres, suggesting that the insect’s range on the island is more widespread than previously thought, and that its food preferences are not limited to Melaleuca howeana.
That species likely was a goner, barring the human breeding program. Successful reintroduction is going to require humans to finish wiping out the rat population on Lord Howe Island (which wiped the insects out there in just two years after their 1918 introduction).
