Restoring nature

Tiahni Adamson: I didn't grow up in Adelaide, but it feels like home. I spent a lot of my twenties here and I've made a lot of good memories with people and with nature. Surrounding Tartanya (which is its Kuarna name) are these lush pockets of green and sometimes it's easy to forget where you are. Australia's fifth-largest city - the capital of South Australia. A coastal place with a population of 1.4 million. The reason for this? It's one of only two National Park cities in the world. Where nature and the urban environment exist together. 

Tiahni Adamson: Evolution has resulted in unimaginable beauty and interconnectedness. But imagine trying to build it all from scratch, block by block. Is it possible to recreate that kind of complexity? In the face of environmental destruction leading to climate change and habitat loss, we have to try. Climate change is here and you've heard all about what that means - warmer temperatures, extreme weather and biodiversity loss. But what about biodiversity as a solution in, and of, itself? This podcast is about where nature and climate change intersect. Join us as we traverse the back roads of this magnificent continent, finding the stories of hope that we all need right now. I'm Tiahni Adamson and this is Big Sky Country, a podcast by Bush Heritage. 

Today, we talk restoration in the city, the ocean and inland. In the city, we take you to to a river that’s waiting for a new, unexpected inhabitant to call it home. In part two, we follow the river out to ocean, where microscopic oyster larvae are using the music of the ocean to navigate, and in part three, we explore how restoration can work in one of the most biodiverse places on the planet.   

Chris Daniels: Yeah, this will be one of the spots, probably. One of the little darlings will be released.

Tiahni Adamson: Zoologist and biologist, Prof/Dr Chris Daniels and I are by the river talking about Platypus.

Chris Daniels: There was no belief that they could be brought back, but it was an aspiration, a dream. What if the river could have them again?

Tiahni Adamson: We are standing by Adelaide's iconic river - Karrawirra Pari - otherwise known as the River Torrens. In front of us is a serene Billabong, where freshwater turtles are basking on river rocks and curious ducks are passing by. 

02:00 Chris Daniels: That's right. You would not believe you're literally 10 minutes from the city. We can hear Limno Dynasties Dumerili, the Pobblebonk Frog, calling out there. 
Tiahni: Are they the little bonk, bonk, bonk? 
Chris: They're the bonk, bonk, bonk, right? And they will get quite loud at sunset. We've got a whole array of water birds. There are coots and moorhens, pacific black duck have just joined us for the interview. You can hear a range of songbirds around here as well. It is quite extraordinary. And then of course, there's the the sound of the lawn cutting up on the Oval nearby, so... 

Tiahni: I used to ride my bike and run along these banks when I was studying wildlife conservation biology at Adelaide Uni. As I followed the rivers contour, my mind always reflects on its Kaurna history. The Kaurna people coexisted with the Karra Wirra Parri, in beautiful synchronicity for tens of thousands of years. Fishing for eels and native crayfish, foraging for freshwater mussels, and living along its banks. Following centuries of degradation post-colonisation, the river has been through a lot. In recent history, the river has had a glow up, and it might be ready for an unexpected transformation. One that could surprise locals. The reintroduction of the platypus. 

Chris Daniels: It's, it's a funny thing about Adelaide. We, uh, keep telling everybody that the Torrens is a shithole. It is a sewer and ugly and don't come down it. You know that was 50 or 100 years ago? Come and have a look at it now.  

Tiahni: Chris is an award-winning science communicator, zoologist, author of many books, and a presenter of a weekly segment on ABC radio. He also heralds the unusual title of urban biologist.  

Chris Daniels: Individuals impact nature directly or indirectly. So you've got to change that. So you've got to develop ecological literacy and where you do all of that is to start at home. Jacques Cousteau famously said, you can't save what you don't love and you can't love what you don't know. And the primary way you learn is experience. What a way to connect with nature if people actually appreciate a spot like this.

Tiahni: You know that Simpsons joke where a squirrel falls into the polluted Lake Springfield and comes out with 20 eyes? For a long time, that's how people have been thinking about the Karra Wirra Parri. People have made jokes about the river being made up of 40% goon. It wasn't really until the mid 20th century that public attitudes began to shift. It's a complex history, but communities and governments slowly started to realize that nature, and specifically nature in urban areas, was something to value. And in the year 2000, the River Torrens Restoration Project began.

05:00 Chris Daniels: Even if an area is destroyed, it's, you know, it's desolate, it's in horrendous condition, doesn't mean it can't recover. Yes. One of the great lessons that nature keeps telling us is - give us a chance. Yeah. Let us come back. And that's what we see with Karra Wirra Parri, with the River Torrens, along its length. This was horrendously destroyed in the 19th century and early part of the 20th, in a horrendous condition. Um, almost none of it had any resemblance to any sort of natural stream. Now most of it's been recovered.

When the stormwater catchment redesign was first undertaken in the 1970s, it was the most complete restructure of an urban river, a major urban river, anywhere in the world. There are some areas that can be improved and it will need continual work. You can't just set and forget, but it's making a huge difference. Making sure the community are aware, they've done a good thing. Now, what next? What more can we do? 

Tiahni: One of the big reasons Chris things this project is so important, is because he knows what can happen when a community comes together around their local parks or rivers. And after all, a connection to nature locally translates into a connection to the bigger systems that prop up nature. While the project may not be so simple, the goal is: get people inspired to think and care about their local ecosystems. One way to do it? Introduce a hero species. But how do you choose the hero?

06:00 Chris Daniels: Well one is to identify species that were here that we exterminated. So platypus, it was a big part of the River Torrens, Karra Wirra Parri prior to European settlement in 1836. It was well recognized as an important totemic animal for Kaurna people. They occupied this river, probably not in large numbers because it tends to be a low density animal, where they feed on the, the water bugs, they make nests in the, the, the bank, um, and live out about a 25 to 30 year life. So they're a really important apex animal that reflects quality of environment. They're a monotreme, an extraordinary animal, a very ancient type of mammal that lays eggs. And they're incredibly loved because they're so weird with their apparent duck bill, although it's not a hard bill, and a little beaver like tail and webbed feet, and that just trucks around at dawn and...

Tiahni: Don't they have a poisonous barb or something?

Chris: Yeah, the males do. They have a spur, which they use to battle with each other over females about this time of year. When they were first discovered here and sent back to England for identification by Sir Richard Owen, the famous identifier, taxonomist at the Museum of Natural History. He thought that the Australians were having a lend of him. That this was a made up animal. Okay, who stitched the bits together? He looked to find where the tail was stitched on or the duck bill or whatever. But no, it was a real and amazing animal. Uh, which changed the whole way we thought about life on Earth.

Tiahni: Chris and his team at Green Adelaide will reintroduce Platypus back to this river in the next couple of years, choosing certain spots along the river that they think might be suitable for them to survive. The team have tested a variety of locations, looking for tell-tale signs of river health. 

Chris: So we have Damsel fly larvae, Dragonfly larvae - all those sorts of things. Yabbies, prawns can all do well in it. It's doing really, really, really well. And that's what we see here at at the moment. 

Tiahni: There are lots of Dragonflies as well

Chris: Yes, you can see them all buzzing around here. Um, the mayflies, um, there's a dragonfly just going past us now. So they're showing that this water at the moment here is in really good condition. Even though it's brown water. And in fact, if it was crystal clear, like a swimming pool, that's a bad thing because it means there are no plants. There's no mud bottom. There's no base. It's just a rock bottom. You know, and we've been to, creeks in, New Zealand, which are glacial creeks of gravel beds. So there's nothing there. Well, nothing can live there either. So it's actually a desert. So, um, how we think about what is healthy is often not what our preconceptions tell us is healthy. 

Tiahni: The typical question that you would get, and I know that you're going to roll your eyes at me, is, uh, people saying things like, Can the platypus really come back here? This is an urban environment. There are a lot of people around. Um, there's been some pollution in the river. Is it good enough habitat? Is it going to be okay for them? 

Chris: And that's, it's a great question, actually. So you go, okay, pollution, what do you mean by that? If you mean plastics pollution and big scale stuff, like bottles, Farmers Union containers, uh, water bottles and so forth, we have been smart. We've had container legislation for 30 years. And in fact, you don't see floating refuse here. 

Tiahni: There's no litter here at all. 

Chris: Yeah. If you look at the water and think about the water in a way that the platypus would think about you get a different view. We conducted a major study in 2020 to see whether the river has improved to a condition where these things could come back. We worked with the Australian Platypus Conservancy, um, and did a huge amount of sampling, particularly around food, but also nesting sites like this bank just here, um, up and down the river to see whether they would be okay. Do they have protection from cats and foxes? Does the water stay at a similar level so it doesn't dry out or get too high and flood the burrows? How does all of that work? And then where do you get platypus? How do you maintain genetic variability and breadth? There are a whole lot of things that are being thought through right now. But we're very close. We are very close to bringing them back,

Tiahni: The biophilia hypothesis is the belief that humans are genetically predisposed to be attracted to nature. With this in mind, Chris has spent most of his life working to bring humans closer to it.  

Chris: We have always been a nomadic species, deeply connected with nature. If we don't have nature, we fade away. It's like we like to go to the beach and sit on a cliff and look at an ocean. That's why we like to look after a lake like this. If we don't have nature, we do badly.

Tiahni: It might seem surprising, but cities can be vital refuges for our precious wildlife. Here, more than 30 species either depend on or are now restricted to the urban environment as their last sanctuary. Take possums, for example — rare across much of South Australia, yet thriving in the city. The Marbled Gecko, once widespread, is now mostly found in metropolitan areas. So, beyond the community impacts we touched in earlier, you might be asking what’s the point? It’s a few platypus along an urban river. Sure, this project alone might not solve the biodiversity and climate crisis, but at its core, it's also about demonstrating that it’s possible for cities to be important places for nature. With inevitable urban sprawl continuing around the country, that’s no small thing.  

Chris Daniels: What we're trying to do is return the species that were here. Just because there's a city on that ecosystem shouldn't preclude the capacity to do that. And in fact, where cities are, are usually the best nature. It's why we put the city here in the first place. It's why Kuarna settled here 40, 000 years ago. There are reasons why this is such a valuable place for biodiversity. So if you want to make a difference to biodiversity, Do it in your own backyard. This is the spot.

Chris: We could be standing here, Tiahni, and you'd see those concentric circles and you might see a platypus head pop up as it cruises around. Once they've got a beak full of food, full of all of those damselfly they'll come up to the surface and they'll go chop, chop, chop, chop, chop, chop, chop, chop, chop. My hands here are being platypus bills. So they grind them up and that's when you see them. And then if it sees you, it'll pop down and disappear. So yes, it's about sucking in the deep breaths and going for it and embracing it.

It's easy to give up. It's often said that we should be triaging biodiversity. You have to also demonstrate that if a community works at it, you can actually recover from a disastrous situation. Nature's incredibly resilient. It's quite extraordinary in its ability to come back if you give it a chance. People giving up means that nothing will happen. People getting engaged means that a lot can happen.  

Tiahni: He's had an illustrious career, to say the least, but reintroducing platypus back to the Karra Wirra Parri, if successful, might be some of Chris's best work. We'll be staying in touch and maybe, one day, we'll catch up with Chris back by the river and watch a platypus at dusk as the city whirls around us.  

PART II: Oyster Music.

Just 15 km from where I met Chris by the billabong. The Karra Wirra Parri flows out into the Southern Ocean. It's an ecological paradise, home to temperate reefs and kelp forests, countless fish, leafy sea dragons, little penguins, and Australian sea lions.

Dom McAffee: In South Australia alone, we know there was 1, 500 km of coastline characterized by oyster reefs. 

Tiahni: This is my friend, Dr Dominic McAffee, a shellfish restoration expert. We're on Glenelg beach. 

Dom: Historically, the reefs stretch for thousands of hectares. So it's kind of hard to imagine what our coastal seas would have been like when we had those reefs, because they have completely changed. Our coastal seas have completely transitioned from hard seafloor, full of life, to more sort of restless sands where you don't have those oysters, providing the foundations.

Tiahni: Many of us tend to equate oysters more with fine dining and a squeeze of lemon than with ecosystems and reef structures. But oysters form the structural basis of complex marine environments, providing homes for pretty much anything and everything.

Dom McAffee: I like to call them ecological superheroes.

Tiahni: Oh, they're not just delicious,  

Dom McAffee: they're not just so much more than food. Um, so I've got all sorts of analogies that I usually roll off. But it's good to think of them like the trees in a forest. They provide hard structure. They grow habitat where lots of other things live. And those lots of other things, little invertebrates and also small fish and things like that underpin, coastal productivity, including food webs that support really large fisheries. So in that regard, they sort of act as, natural fish factories of the sea.  

Tiahni: These food webs are the blueprint for biodiversity – they foster healthy carbon cycles and protect underwater vegetation. oyster reefs also help protect human communities and coastal ecosystems from the devastating impacts of climate-related events. They safeguard coastal areas from the impact of waves, storm surges, and sea level rise. Today, Australians eat an average of 7 kg of oysters annually, not to mention the tens of thousands of kilograms of oysters we export every year. Our relationship with oysters is nothing new. But this sort of volume doesn’t allow oysters to fulfil their duties outside of the human palette.  

Dom McAffee: Oysters and their bivalve cousins have been used on every continent by multiple human species for a really long time. Archaeological research shows that Homo erectus was carving artistic impressions on the inside of mussel shells and other shells half a million years ago in Indonesia. So there's a really interesting long history and it's just that last 200 years where that relationship has turned seriously sour, because we were just, extremely effective at scraping oysters from the seafloor and actually removing all of them to eat them, but also to manufacture road base and concrete and, and for laying down the foundations for colonial Australia with oyster cement.

Tiahni: Dom's on a mission to regenerate oyster reefs. That's what brings us to Glenelg North, a beautiful sandy beach on a bright sunny day. But also one of the most urbanized parts of the Adelaide metropolitan coastline. I might be 20 minutes from home, but that's not the only reason I chose this location.  

Dom McAffee: One of, I'd say, Australia's, you know, true conservation success stories is happening just under the water, about 900 meters from where we're sitting. And not that many people really know about it because it's under the water. So, you got to get wet to, to, to really experience it.  

Tiahni: You might think you're listening to some kind of underwater popping candy. But to oyster larvae, this may as well be a lullaby. Until recently, the scientific community considered the settlement of oyster larvae as they find a place to live, To be one huge lottery. With the tide pushing these untethered microscopic cells across the ocean until they either find a home or didn't.

Dom McAffee: This, this is just the most It's fun research to talk about and it's been a huge success. So we've been playing underwater sounds, been using underwater speakers for several years now and we'd done a few years of work in the lab, playing different sounds to larval oysters before they settle down and are the familiar cells with a shell, stuck on the sea floor, the tiny larvae floating around looking for a place to live. So we recorded sounds from all across the gulf. Unfortunately it wasn't Barry White or Mozart. And we played those different sounds to oyster larvae in the lab, and, recognized where, which ones they like the most in terms of which ones induced them to sink down to the bottom of our little settlement tanks and metamorphose glue themselves to the sea floor to start the next life phase where they turn into adult oysters.

We then took those favourite sounds and we built what we call the oyster raceway an 8 m long tank. It wasn't a fast race, but we put about 40,000 larvae in the middle of that tank and gave them a basic choice experiment. Do you swim towards? So oysters can swim, actively swim, because there's no current in there. And every single one that moved from that central position swam towards, our speaker. Okay. And for a microscopic, you know, 100 micron across, organism to swim four meters in 24 hours, that's like, you know, me swimming to Chile or something. Maybe, I don't know, I haven't done the math. But it's a long way. Um, so that's, that was a really remarkable finding to see that they were making those decisions. We're talking about brainless invertebrates, little are they, that are making decisions about their environment, what sounds they preference and how to get towards that.

Tiahni: It's a bit like when a band starts at a music festival and all of a sudden a thousand punters start moving in the same direction. The difference? This is a slow going process. 

Dom McAffee: What's the time scale in the ocean? Like, how long does it take to see positive results? Is it a long term thing? Is it a couple of hundred years? That's a really great question, which we're constantly talking about. How do we define success? Because, you know, restoration doesn't necessarily have, an end point. After about two and a half years we have densities of mature reproductive size oysters, approximately 200 oysters per meter squared. And those are densities that we see on the only surviving flat oyster reef, which is down in Tasmania. There are many ways to define success, but in terms of the oysters, getting back to those similar densities of large oysters, in two and a half years is absolutely astonishing. 

Tiahni: That's incredible. 

Dom: To create old growth reefs like old growth forest, It will take decades for them to form habitats that used to exist because we had crusts of oysters metres thick. That will take a long time. But in terms of restoring a functional oyster ecosystem, we can do that within a matter of years. We need healthy, productive coastal seas for a sustainable future. I'm so privileged to work in a discipline where you do see hope and, natural, human induced recoveries because that's really needed. And that's a message that I really like to share. We also have a lot of failures as well. That's a big part of the learning curve and communicating that not shying away. Recognizing that nature is so dynamic, we can't understand everything about it. But it's so much more wonderful than we could possibly even imagine, I think. And it's that wonder of nature, combined with the hope that nature provides for rapid ecosystem recoveries, that, you know, really fills me with, with excitement and joy.

Tiahni: The audio work is all very new, so it’s unseen just how large of an effect it could have on oyster restoration into the future. For now, may Dom’s speakers off Glenelg North ignite a long and fruitful oyster party.

Sometimes it's about humility, [00:21:00] small scale tinkering or working to find the missing piece of the puzzle to nudge nature back in the right direction. There's also a place for restoration to happen on a landscape scale, reversing the enormity of human induced actions with an enormous response. For our last story on restoration, I wanted to talk to someone working in a similarly complex environment who's attempting to transform vast areas of land from a bare paddock into a wildlife haven.

Part III - A corridor.  

Alex Hams: You, you're a healthy, I'm a healthy landscape manager. Beautiful. That's a great title. It's a pretty cool title, isn't it? It is, yeah. I'm pretty happy to have that one on the end of my email signature.  

Tiahni: This is Alex Hams. He's been working in conservation for over two decades. And he's landed a pretty cool, but extremely high stakes job near where he grew up in Southwest WA, where we're sitting for this interview.  

Alex Hams: This place has been farmed for probably the last 60 to 70 years. Mainly for sheep, but with a little bit of cropping as well. We purchased this in, 2022, with the hope of being able to restore it back to a functional ecosystem.

Tiahni: The Southwest Botanical Province is home to thousands of unique plant species, many of which are found nowhere else. This, in turn, supports a lot of unique animals. The region happens to form a part of the Western Wheat Belt. In the last century it's been devastated by land clearing. Ediegarrup, the reserve we're meeting on, is no different.  

Alex Hams: Fundamentally this restoration project is about creating connectivity across the landscape. What we're hoping to do, is to put back as many of the native species that exist from this local area using local provenance seed, where these plants have adapted over tens and hundreds of thousands of years, and be able to provide, a functional ecosystem, a habitat that also provides an opportunity for animals to move through the landscape in a connective way.

Tiahni: Alex and his team, including the revegetation experts over at Greening Australia, are forging ahead with a unique carbon sequestration project, which will restore a biodiverse nature corridor. If you haven't heard that term, it's basically a patch of bushland that connects up other areas of bushland. In the modern age of land division and fences, these kinds of corridors are critical for native species, like the Western Quoll, Tamar Wallaby and Pygmy Possum. Animals don't recognise and don't react well to fences, and they need to move. Whether away from threats like predation and bushfires, or to cooler areas, or to find mates.  

Alex Hams: To create a viable, functional ecosystem, we need to put back enough structure to be able to provide good habitat for our native fauna. So thinking about that, we talk about the ground covers. So the stuff that sits within zero to 30 centimetres high. Then we go to the small shrubs, which might be half a metre, the medium sized shrubs that might be, say, two metres. And then we've got the canopy cover, which is the trees. With some of our Banksia and, and Hakea species that we're planting here, we should start to see some, Carnaby Black Cockatoo. That's another one of our threatened species coming back in. But we also would like to see other birds like Western Whipbirds that are very vulnerable and not so common. We'd see Honey Possums, Pygmy Possums coming back in. We know that they will come if we create that habitat for them. There are a bunch of different reptiles, insects, but also, some of our larger animals, the Tammar and the Black-gloved Wallaby, they require specific habitat types and some of those we're planting, in patches throughout this, reserve, and so hopefully we'll get a lot of those coming back in and, and utilising this space as well.

Tiahni: Awesome. I think the insects part that you just touched on is really important as well, hey, because they're, for most people they don't find them as cute as your furry or feathered friends, but the, the beetles and the diversity of insects that we have is so critical to a healthy ecosystem. Um, and the bees. Native bees. We bloody need yous around. 

Alex: Yeah, totally. And, and look, those insects are really fundamental to the, food chain. Once you start getting those insects in, you start getting some of the birds that are feeding on them, and some of the , reptiles that are feeding on those insects. And, and then you get some of the birds of prey and other animals coming in to fill that, that whole niche. I think it's pretty cool when you start to see a good functional ecosystem, you're going to see all of those different parts of that environment come out and, take a part of, the picture that we want to see.

Tiahni: So good, a little nature party, everyone hanging out together.  

I wanted to ask Alex specifically about Pygmy Possums. Now, if you don't know what they are, I suggest you Google them immediately as they're one of the cutest animals on Earth. They're also one of the species that have taken a strong liking to Bush Heritage's work.  

Alex Hams: Now, pygmy possums want to create their own little nests. They use these little hollows, little, areas where they're, they're sheltered. And they'll, we just put out a little letterbox type box. arrangement on a star picket next to a tree so that they can jump into it. They bring their own bedding. Yeah, they've got their little tails. They'll pick off the type of leaves that they, just the type of leaves that they like to make their nest. They'll bring them all in, create a little hollow nest inside that little letterbox arrangement. They'll be really happy and they'll actively breed. And, um, we've seen that at a bunch of our reserves, um, including Monjebup down the road here. And it provides an opportunity for them to start to breed up some of their numbers, and to be able to utilize the habitats that we've created. Hopefully, you know, in 50 to 100 years, all of the trees that we're planting here will create their own little hollows and we won't need these little nest boxes to be here because they'll have their own little, hollows in nature.

Tiahni: That's awesome. That's so cool. I just want to peer in and peek at their cute little faces. Yeah. I know that I wouldn't want that though. They'd be like, get out. Leave us alone. This is our letterbox box. 

Alex: We do, we do on occasion have to go and check to see what sort of usage the nest boxes are actually getting and whether they're...

Tiahni: Shotgun coming out when you do it.

Alex: Yeah. Yeah. Oh, don't worry. We've got a very long list of people that want to come out and take part in that activity. Uh, it's pretty cool. They're cute. They're the cutest little creatures. They're smaller than a little mouse. They've got big beady eyes because they're nocturnal. They pop their head out of their little nest and look at you and go, uh-oh, back down into that little nest again.

Tiahni: So, how many species have you planted here? About a hundred?  

Alex: We've got over 110, we're aiming for about 150 eventually. We'll see how we go. Come, come back in 10 years and I'll tell you how we're going. 

Tiahni: I will. So, we're in some wild times with climate and country at the moment, and this is a biodiversity hotspot, a unique region, there's nowhere else like it. Can you describe how this place is being affected by climate change and how things might change with future warming and predicted warming?

Alex: We're starting to see warmer days, particularly during summer. We're starting to see, a change in that weather pattern. So when the rain comes and how much rain we get. I hope that through projects like this, we're starting to have a small impact, at least locally on carbon being sequestered. If that connectivity is planned animals can move from areas where it is hot through those corridors down to the coast where it's a bit cooler, where there's a little bit more moisture around, where they might be able to get some relief. We talk about creating a resilient ecosystem through, our restoration and connectivity program. And, I think the impacts of, climate change, are one of the things that we're trying to sort of combat when we do that.  

Tiahni: Alex knows it and so do we. It's impossible to replicate a natural ecosystem. But each time we try, we accrue more knowledge holders, better technology, better research, I could go on. So when we try to get as close as possible to more or less playing God, we need the ultimate A Team. They say it takes a village to raise a child. So, what does it take to raise an ecosystem?

Alex Hams: We're working really closely with, specialist native seed collectors that have been honing their skills at finding the right types of plants and when to pick them and how to get the best quality of seed for our projects. We're working with traditional owners that have, skills and knowledge of the natural bushland that help us to make sure that we, one get a better outcome in terms of the restoration, but also to make sure that we're protecting cultural values and, particularly around looking at cultural surveys and finding which sites we might want to avoid or which sites we might want to plant with particular types of species.

We've been able to get some of the bush tucker foods that, that have traditionally been harvested from out in this little area, back into little nodes and sort of little pockets where the Noongar rangers have put, platisaki or the, or the little, ground potatoes, back into these particular spots. So that then. Five, six years down the track, they can come and then harvest them and use them for, for their own food purposes. We're working with, land managers who are helping us to manage some of our, threats like rabbits, for instance, that might come and graze on some of our emerging seedlings. We want to make sure that when we do this, we do it really well up front. And a lot of that's around making sure that we're planning and developing these projects.

Tiahni: When we were making this episode, one through line began to emerge between all three of our amazing restoration experts. The extraordinary humility of being able to foster projects that will last well beyond their lifetime. Nature might be resilient, but it can also move very slowly.  

What's the personal goal for you that you'd like to see in this landscape within the next 50 years?

Alex: If we could get 50 years down the track, a connective landscape between the Stirling Range and the Fitzgerald River National Parks, that would be something special. This vision of Gondwana Link, which is a really ambitious thousand kilometre connective corridor across the south coast of WA, it's a multi generational program. I'd love for my kids, and my kids' kids to be able to come back here, in 50 years time and see Malleefowl walking through the bush, seeing black glove wallabies and tammars, seeing Carnaby cockatoos that are, you know, really on the edge of, a collapse to be able to see them thriving and surviving in this space. I reckon it'd be pretty cool.  

Tiahni: It was the American conservationist Aldo Leopold who said, To keep every cog and wheel is the first precaution of intelligent tinkering. In other words, or at least how I hear it, if you don't understand it, don't touch it. Of course, in a post colonial, post industrial world, in many cases, the opportunity to leave nature be has well passed. Now, for the love of nature and in knowing just how important biodiversity is, as we attempt to solve the climate crisis, there are some incredible changemakers trying to rebuild ecosystems from the ground up the best way they know how. If I've learnt anything from making this season of Big Sky Country, it's that there are so many incredible people doing that work right now. Land managers, Traditional Custodians, ecologists, academics and everyday people. Our neighbours planting native gardens to attract birds and bees. Our friends of groups down by the river pulling weeds on the weekends. Our Elders sharing and passing down knowledge so it never gets lost. Our fearless young environmentalists choosing a career in science or conservation. You don't have to be Bob Brown to make your impact. Every action matters.

We'd like to acknowledge the Kuarna and Noongar people, the Traditional Custodians of the land we've recorded this podcast on, as well as the Traditional Custodians of the lands that you're listening in from. We pay our respects to elders, past, present and emerging, and acknowledge the deep and ongoing relationship our First Nations communities have with the ocean, land, freshwater, and all living beings. 

Big thanks to our guests, Chris Daniels, Dominic McAfee and Alex Hams. This episode was produced by Will Sacre and myself, Tiahni Adamson. Original score and mix by Mike Williams and Timothy McCaskey mixed by Mike Williams. Our theme music was generously contributed by the Orb Weavers. We'll share the link to the work of Chris and Dominic in the show notes. Alex Hams has since left Bush Heritage to pursue more adventures in the conservation space. You'll also find a link to learn more and contribute to Bush Heritage's restoration work in Southwest WA. 

Next time on Big Sky Country - heat. We're looking at how native species versus invasive species will fare in a warming climate and how humans can continue to manage country as conditions become more extreme. It's a good one and you won't want to miss it. For now, subscribe, tell a friend and leave a review. It really helps.