Red sand country – food for the soul

Someone surrendered a Thorny Devil to Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service in Mackay. They contacted us here at Ethabuka Reserve to see if we could release it. After some treatment, and a health check we released it on reserve the next day.

The 2021/22 La Nina has brought significant rainfall to the eastern seaboard of Australia, while the west has seen below average conditions. Here are some weather highlights from the first few months.

An ecologist’s ode to our native rodents. We recently encountered a rat plague of native Long-haired Rats (Rattus villosissimus) at Ethabuka Reserve, Wangkamadla country during our annual fauna survey. Native long-haired rats are well known for their population eruptions which has earned it its other common name of Plague Rat!

I was hesitant about going out to the desert to volunteer for Bush Heritage in January this year. It’s such a long way and it’s dusty and hot. But a trip to Craven’s Peak was available and I thought I should – don’t I always say, “if you haven’t tried something, don’t knock it?”

Feral cats kill an estimated 2 billion animals in Australia every year, but nuanced solutions on Bush Heritage reserves and partnership properties across Australia are helping to turn the tide.

A new report published last week highlights 19 ecosystems on land and sea country that are unravelling due to pressures from climate change and human impacts. The Georgina Gidgee woodlands of central Australia is one of them.

With words and brush, volunteer caretaker, Angela Woltmann paints a glorious picture of Christmas spent on Ethabuka Reserve with her husband Shane.

Early summer months (December-January) bring back the unrelentless dry heat to Bush Heritage’s Ethabuka Reserve in far western Queensland. Temperatures soar over the mid-40s and rolling dust storms and haze that always seem to arrive when you have just cleaned the house!

University of Sydney researcher Emma Spencer is helping us understand how carcasses might be putting our native species at risk.

University of Sydney PhD student Emma Spencer is monitoring life and death out in far western Queensland.

Already 7 months have passed since we arrived at Ethabuka, and one thing that has amazed us is the weather. Arid areas certainly are lands of the extreme! Cold, hot, windy, dusty...

We've been testing the use of burn lines as a way to draw cats towards our new Felixer cat traps at Ethabuka Reserve. The results so far are super encouraging.

A more sophisticated understanding of how climate change will impact Cravens Peak and Ethabuka reserves is focusing our conservation efforts when and where they will do the greatest good.

Have you ever stopped to think, how does the provision of resources in the landscape affect wildlife patterns in general? If you add a heap of additional unexpected food resources, what then happens to the array of carrion eaters and predators, and how does this affect other smaller animals?

It's well known that cats have a huge and often catastrophic impact on native species and are notoriously difficult to control. The Felixer cat trap might be the solution.

At least 330mls of rain has fallen at Ethabuka Reserve so far this year – but in a cruel irony, it’s been too wet to reach the weather station so no-one has the exact figures.

The unprecedented rain that fell at Ethabuka Reserve this winter has presented the Sydney University Desert Ecology Research Group with a rare chance to study life in these unusual conditions. They've been studying the ecology of the desert on Ethabuka for over 25 years and these are the most significant winter rains, leaving everyone eager to see what lies ahead.

Fourteen groups of volunteers kept us busy this year. Reconstructing and strengthening boundary fences was the top priority. In one particularly mammoth undertaking, volunteers managed to pull down and wind up 20km of fence in two days! On another day, two teams went out and put in an extra 2,000 posts at weak points along a fence to strengthen it.

Scientists from all walks of life are drawn to the red sands of Ethabuka Reserve to volunteer under the expert guidance of our research partners from The University of Sydney.

This year Reserve couple, Matt and Amanda Warr, welcomed not only a new family member, but also a small army of volunteers to their new desert home. Here, Amanda reflects on the Warr Family's first year living on Ethabuka Reserve and the volunteers who supported them.