Playing the long game

The numbers are significant: 234,694 hectares, 100-plus years of cattle grazing, and countless camels, donkeys and rabbits. The scale of the job for Bush Heritage at Evelyn Downs is enormous. But the conservation opportunities are even bigger.

Evelyn Downs sits in the red centre of South Australia, two hours up the Stuart Highway from Coober Pedy. It’s Antakirinja Matu-Yankunytjatjara and Yankunytjatjara land, home to culturally significant sites and criss-crossed with Tjukurpa stories, laying down the lore of the land. Crucially, Evelyn Downs is located adjacent to the Mount Willoughby Indigenous Protected Area to the west, and the Tallaringa Conservation Park further south. Together these properties create a protected area of approximately 1.9 million hectares.

“Through the purchase and protection of Evelyn Downs, we increased protected land in our South Australian Arid Rangelands Priority Landscape from 8.62% to 10.2%, safeguarding incredibly diverse arid ecosystems,” says Chantal Fowler, Head of Region Western Australia and South Australia, noting that it also contributes to Bush Heritage’s ambitious target of doubling the land we manage by 2030.

“It is stunningly beautiful Country,” says Graeme Finlayson, Healthy Landscapes Manager South Australia. The reserve is located within the Painted Desert – so called because of the striking stratification of colour on the rocky outcrops that dot the desert. “You’ve got all the reds, yellows and whites – these incredible changing colours across the landscape,” he says.

Prior to our management, the land was used as a cattle station for nearly 100 years. In addition to camels, donkeys and rabbits, it has pockets of invasive Buffel Grass (Cenchrus ciliaris) and Sweet Acacia (Vachellia farnesiana). Cats and foxes stalk prey at night. Erosion scours the sand. The task ahead is not for the faint-hearted.

Thanks to our generous supporters, we acquired the land in January 2024. The key to successful management begins with careful planning. Step one for the team was baseline monitoring to identify and prioritise the values we want to protect on the reserve, while assessing the landscape’s condition. In addition, contractors rounded up all the cattle hiding in the scrub, and reserve managers Corinna Clark and Ingo Schomaker are leading a team of volunteers to improve the reserve’s infrastructure.

Ned Ryan-Schofield, ecologist for South Australia Arid Rangelands, says the open plains are dominated by Oodnadata Saltbush (Atriplex incrassata) and Barley Mitchell grass (Astrebla pectinata). Having been previously managed for agriculture, the Barley Mitchell grass at Evelyn Downs is grazed down. “Looking at those dominant species is a good proxy for improvements in habitat,” explains Ned. “We will continue to monitor our vegetation transects going forward to get a picture of how the land changes.”

Step two is to draw up a realistic plan to systematically tackle the threats to the values we’ve identified we want to protect. For example, we need to consider where hungry cats and foxes might turn for a meal once we enact management to control invasive rabbit populations.

Part of the planning is to understand the cultural significance of the place for Traditional Custodians. Bruce Hammond, Aboriginal Partnerships Manager South Australia, is excited to continue working with Antakirinja Matu-Yankunytjatjara and Yankunytjatjara communities to manage Country together: “Right-way science is an inclusive process that basically sits with mob and says, ‘Ok, what are the rules and guidelines around how we manage the Country and how do you manage that with us?’” he says.

In addition to sharing Traditional Knowledge, he says the communities are also keen to learn from Bush Heritage. This shared approach will bring about benefits and learnings not only for Evelyn Downs, but for the neighbouring Indigenous-managed lands and the wider region.

The work that we are doing on the reserve will contribute more broadly to understanding the ecology of the region. “There’s a whole suite of arid-zone fauna and flora that is poorly understood and studied. We have an opportunity to look more deeply at those species and communities”, says Graeme. For example, the property contains endemic flora and fauna species such as the vulnerable Bronzeback Snake-lizard (Ophidiocephalus taeniatus) and the critically endangered Arckaringa Daisy (Olearia arckaringensis). The daisy has an extremely restricted distribution, found only in the region’s breakaway country, which means seed collected from plants on Evelyn Downs will be vital in protecting its future.

The desert is adapted to long periods without decent rain, and Graeme says that some desert species – such as the Plains Mouse (Pseudomys australis) – only flourish after floods, so Evelyn Downs will have more tricks to reveal after the next big rains. But with the surveys documenting plenty of viable seeds, he’s confident the plant-life is well equipped to spring back when conditions are right.

Soon, Evelyn Downs will move into the third phase of its Conversation Management Process: implement. This will see boots on the ground – weeding, clearing, removing fencing, and controlling pests – requiring thousands of hours of volunteer time. But the payoff is expected to be worth it: a vast patch of unique Australian desert, protected in perpetuity. •

We gratefully acknowledge the donors and supporters who made our protection and ongoing management of Evelyn Downs possible.