Big Sky Country

While remote communities face many challenges without easy access to country, these camps create an opportunity for dance, storytelling and play, and for community leaders to pass down important ecological and cultural knowledge to the next generation.

Featuring Aunty Nancy McDinny, Uncle Jack Green, Karen Noble, Donald Shadforth, Dr Terry Mahney, and Kelly Retief. Produced by Will Sacre and Eliza Herbert.

This was to be the first cultural burn held on a Bush Heritage reserve in NSW, and the beginning of a significant conversation about how fire has and hasn't been used in the continent’s southeast for centuries.

Featuring Uncle James Ingram, Vikki Parsley, Dean Freeman, and George and Win Maine. Produced by Will Sacre and Eliza Herbert.

With over 58% of Australia managed for agricultural production, Imogen’s work is part of a new ‘natural capital accounting’ initiative that recognises that if we are to feed and clothe our planet, while protecting it, then we need to be looking at innovative ways to boost ecosystem health across agricultural lands. Part of the solution? Putting biodiversity on the books.

Featuring Imogen Semmler, Associate Professor Jim Radford, Angela Hawdon and Anna and Gus Hickman. Produced by Bee Stephens and Eliza Herbert.

While their efforts might seem small in a global context, what they prove is that where there’s a will, there’s a way. And where’s there’s people, there’s the power to change the world for better.

Conservation is a people issue; we’ve caused the problems and we have the power to fix the problems – while having a whole heap of green-thumbed fun.

Featuring Phil Palmer, Kim Jarvis, Antia Brademann and Scottsdale volunteers. Produced by Coco McGrath and Eliza Herbert.

Since the late 80s, Wunambal Gaambera Traditional Custodians and scientists have led a series of expeditions to the archipelago off the coast to better understand their rich biodiversity. The findings? 'The Galapagos of the Kimberley,' and remarkable ecosystems, all protected by Wunambal Gaambera people.

Featuring Tom Vigilante, Jeremy Kowan, Desmond Williams, Frank Koehler and Norm McKenzie. Produced by Bee Stephens and Eliza Herbert.

With the support of Woodland Bird Ecologist Courtney Melton, Teixiera is leading a large-scale acoustic monitoring project to measure the condition of woodland bird communities in Queensland.  

Their ethos is that a rich soundscape, is a healthy landscape, and that sound is a vital solution to land management and protection.

Featuring Dr Daniella Teixiera, Dr Courtney Melton and Professor Paul Roe. Produced by Coco McGrath and Eliza Herbert.

In this episode, we drive down the Gunbarrel Highway to the Birriliburu Indigenous Protected Area in WA’s central deserts to find some of the oldest sandalwood trees in the world. Underneath their scrambling canopies, we ask: How are they going in the wild? What makes these trees so special? And what does their future hold?

Guests: Richard McLellan (PhD Student and sandalwood enthusiast), Clinton Farmer (Martu Traditional Custodian and sandalwood harvester), Stella Shipway (Bush Heritage Healthy Country Manager). Produced by Kate Thorburn and Eliza Herbert (Host)

Different phases of plant and animal lifecycles, variations in animal behaviours, cloud formations and wind directions can indicate the right time to harvest different plants and foods, and the right time to burn different vegetation. But lately, with climate change accelerating, the seasons aren't always as they used to be.

We take you to central Arnhem Land to learn about the Rembarrnga and Dalabon seasonal calendars, and the community-wide effort to keep their language, culture and country strong.

Guests: Annette Miller (Rembarrnga Elder), Chantelle Miller (Rembarrnga woman), Norrie Martin (Rembarrnga Elder), Katie Degnian (Bush Heritage Ecologist, Dalabon Elder. Produced by Amelia Caddy and Eliza Herbert (Host).

We take you to its home, where water from deep in the earth below has travelled up to the surface of an arid, inland environment and given rise to what some scientists have called the ‘most significant natural springs for global biodiversity in the Great Artesian Basin.’

So, how did the fish come to be here in the first place? And what’s being done to save it?

Guests: Dr Pippa Kern (freshwater ecologist), Suzanne Thompson (Traditional Custodian), Graeme Finsen (Australia and New Guinea Fishes Association Queensland President). Produced by Kate Thorburn and Eliza Herbert (Host)

They call it boom and bust country, out the back o' Bourke, and it's part of the last unregulated river system in the Murray Darling Basin. Dry soil transforms into wetlands full of frogs singing, waterbirds flocking and insects buzzing.

Water has sustained people, plants and animals for millennia, but in recent decades, Budjiti people have seen water, and the species that depend on it, disappearing. How much more can we lose?

Guests: Vanessa Westcott (ecologist), Greg Carroll (Reserve Manager), Phil Eulo (Budjiti Elder). Produced by Amelia Caddy and Eliza Herbert (Host)

They can fit in the palm of your hand. They have death-inducing mating habits. And, while they were once widespread across the southern half of Australia, they're now mostly restricted to the wheatbelt region of Western Australia.

Over a decade ago, a small group of these phascogales were bundled up, driven 100km and translocated to their new home: Kojonup Reserve on Wagyl Kaip and Southern Noongar country. Today, we find out how the population is surviving.

Guests: Angela Sanders (ecologist), Dr Michelle Hall (ecologist), Dr Tony Friend (former research scientist with the Department of Biodiversity, Conservation & Attractions WA). Produced by Amelia Caddy and Eliza Herbert (Host)

Grey Box and Yellow Box trees form the eucalypt backbone of our Nardoo Hills Reserves on Dja Dja Wurrung country in central Victoria, providing crucial habitats for all sorts of woodland birds, insects and tree-dwelling mammals.

When the woodlands began to die in 2008 and again in 2014, Bush Heritage scientists and volunteers devised a plan: an innovative climate-ready experiment to help keep trees in the landscape as temperatures rise and rainfall decreases.

Guests: Dr Garry McDonald (lead researcher on Climate Resilience Project), Kate Fitzherbert (Science Manager), Harley Douglas (Dja Dja Wurrung Traditional Custodian). Produced by Kate Thorburn and Eliza Herbert (Host)