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Bush Heritage has made significant progress in its Fauna Recovery Project, a program that manages the threats of cats, foxes, and rabbits in Noongar Country, Southwest WA, near Albany. It’s one of the world’s most biodiverse regions, and the team is optimistic the project is making headway in stopping invasive predators from decimating the region’s unique native wildlife.
Despite significant headway in the removal of animals, invasive predator numbers remain steady mainly due to reinvasion of foxes in such a prominent agricultural landscape. The rise of AI-driven technology and promising sightings of rare native animals offers a glimpse of hope. Thanks to funding from Lotterywest, the project is uniquely placed to tackle the issues head on.
“Certainly, from observation, we're seeing many more Malleefowl than we did five years ago,” says Fauna Recovery Project Officer, Jeff Pinder. “Tammar wallabies, which are shy, fairly sedentary animals seem to be slowly spreading out across the landscape and in the final year of the project, one of our remote cameras detected a Chuditch (Western Quoll). So that’s really great news.”
The project’s central aim is to facilitate the return of these species.
It’s not that long ago that Chuditch would have roamed this land in healthy numbers, making their dens in tree hollows, along creek lines and under rocks. This contrast between past and present is a constant reminder of the project's importance.
Today, it’s hard to imagine a land where sighting a quoll, bandicoot or phascogale in the wild could be anything less than noteworthy, but Jeff hears stories throughout the community that force him to reflect on the ecology of the landscape differently.
“Animals like numbats, hare-wallabies, bettongs and bilbies all would've been here in the past. There’s one account of from a local Noongar Elder saving native animals from excavators in this area, including three numbats. This is in living memory,” he says.
Invasive predators and habitat fragmentation are among the biggest threats to these species. Bush Heritage is in the business of tackling these threats, increasing their reserve footprint in the area, restoring large amounts of land with biodiverse revegetation, and managing invasive predators at scale with the Fauna Recovery Project.
The team’s work has galvanised a movement in this biodiversity hotspot. For Jeff, it’s just as much about having a measurable impact on native species numbers in the short-term, as it is improving their methodologies as part of a longer-term strategy. One novel technology that’s been adopted is the Felixer grooming trap.
“The Felixers are very effective at specifically targeting feral cats. They use AI to detect target species, then shoot a gooey, toxic gel that cats lick off to clean themselves.”
One of the more complex, rewarding elements of the work comes in the form of community engagement. This project is not specific to Bush Heritage reserves—it requires collaboration from the wider community, including 14 private landholders, 20 farming properties, government agencies, and Aboriginal partners. Gaining trust and building partnerships is a challenging but crucial part of the process.
"This is landscape-scale work, so a lot of it happens on neighbouring properties, and this kind of collaboration, although so important for invasive species management, doesn’t happen across much of WA,” says Jeff. "There’s a lot of community engagement involved.”
The team is now armed with a foundation of data and an array of increasingly complex tools, and they are hoping to continue the project well into the future.
“I think it's really important we continue managing invasive predators," Jeff says. "We’re in a very altered, fragmented landscape which has had significant, adverse consequences for our native wildlife, so we can't just walk away.”
This work is possible due to the major support of Lotterywest.
