A model for change

For Kelly Price, Tarcutta Hills Reserve Manager, healthy Country is something you can hear and see.

“When you drive into the reserve suddenly everything comes to life,” Kelly says. “The shapes, the colours, the textures. If you’re still, you’ll start hearing all sorts of animals. You’ll hear the birdsong. This is a habitat area for a lot of declining woodland birds. But you’ll also hear a little scuttling sort of sound, and it’s an antechinus. The Squirrel Gliders usually come out just before the sun goes down. They’re very quiet but when they land on a tree you hear a slight thud, which is amazing.”

Anyone who has driven the Hume Highway between Sydney and Melbourne will have passed Tarcutta Hills Reserve on Wiradjuri Country in southern New South Wales. Most people have no idea it’s there, but birds do. More than a hundred bird species feed and forage at Tarcutta Hills Reserve. Critically endangered Swift Parrots (Lathamus discolor) feast on the reserve’s flowering gums during their early winter migration north.

At 738 hectares, Tarcutta Hills is one of our smaller reserves, but supports a large remnant area of Box Gum Grassy Woodland, a critically endangered ecological community that is estimated to have lost more than 90% of its distribution since colonisation.

We first began our management of the land at Tarcutta Hills in 1999 and later added hundreds of hectares to the reserve through the purchase and protection of neighbouring land. Thanks to the backing of dedicated supporters, thoughtful revegetation has expanded wildlife corridors, old fences have been dismantled, weeds removed, animals and plants surveyed, and cultural heritage mapped. In 2022, Wiradjuri people led the way in returning cultural fire to Tarcutta Hills, the first cultural burn on a Bush Heritage reserve in New South Wales.

These efforts have created real change, shown in the return of at-risk woodland birds to revegetated sites, in the new abundance of plant species in areas where cultural burning has been conducted, and in the sharing of conservation knowledge through scientific research.

“Prior to Bush Heritage’s management, Tarcutta Hills was Country that had been neglected for a long time,” says Vikki Parsley, Aboriginal Partnerships Manager for New South Wales. “The Country was quite sick. With cultural burning, biodiversity has increased.”

“This reserve is setting a foundation because there has been a greater depth of involvement of Traditional Custodians. That is a kind of formula that can applied across Bush Heritage to other areas we work in.”

Rob Murphy, Executive Manager of Conservation Operations, agrees Tarcutta Hills is a template for the work we are doing to deepen our impact, including at newer reserves such as Nil Desperandum in New South Wales, Evelyn Downs in South Australia and Sanstrom Reserve in Victoria.

“We’re not just about expanding,” Rob says. “When we acquire a reserve, we do see immediate changes from the initial land management practices we put in place. But there are also many longer-term changes that take not just years but decades.

Brenda Duffy, Healthy Landscapes Manager New South Wales, says the lessons from 26 years managing Tarcutta Hills Reserve are vital in the face of climate change, which is already having an impact on the reserve. Huge storms have damaged and killed old trees, while droughts and warmer temperatures exacerbate the threat of bushfire during summer.

“With the intensification of climate change as a threat, we can take the lessons and responses from Tarcutta Hills to inform some of the practices on our new reserves, including restoration practices, fire preparation and management, and collaborating with neighbours to clean up after large storms.”

Amid the climate and biodiversity crises, Tarcutta Hills Reserve is a model for change and a reminder that ‘healthy Country, protected forever’ requires long-term commitment. •

We gratefully acknowledge the Dingle family for their support of our partnership work with the Wiradjuri people, the Traditional Custodians of Tarcutta Hills Reserve.