Major win as Bush Heritage secures final puzzle piece
Bush Heritage Australia has successfully secured Wanarra, a 107,000-hectare property in WA's Mid West. It’s a landmark acquisition that tackles large-scale habitat fragmentation.
Bush Heritage Australia has secured a critical 27-hectare parcel of land that will strengthen habitat connectivity across a highly fragmented landscape in south-west Western Australia and create new opportunities for wildlife to move, adapt and thrive.
While modest in size, the Torquata Ridge section delivers significant conservation benefits. This latest acquisition protects a key section of the Monjebup Creek corridor and improves connectivity between Bush Heritage’s Red Moort and Dodgey Downs reserves on Goreng Noongar Country, around 135km north-east of Albany in WA’s Wheatbelt.
This win in the south-west lands as Bush Heritage strives to secure the protection of a large property called Wanarra on Widi Mob and Badimia Country, 220km south-east of Geraldton in Mid-West WA. Wanarra is also a critical missing link and will help unite more than one million hectares of connected private and public conservation lands. To support these efforts visit our donation page.
The south-west of WA one of Australia’s most cleared and fragmented landscapes, with more than 90% of its original native vegetation removed. Habitat loss and fragmentation continue to threaten iconic species such as the Chuditch (Western Quoll), Malleefowl, Carnaby’s Cockatoo and Honey Possum.
Bush Heritage Australia Executive Manager of Conservation Operations Robert Murphy said the acquisition represented a strategic step towards rebuilding landscape-scale connectivity across the region.
– Robert Murphy, Bush Heritage Australia Executive Manager of Conservation Operations"This property fills an important gap in our reserve network and strengthens a vital habitat corridor through one of Australia's most biodiverse but heavily cleared landscapes."
"Protecting individual remnants of bushland is important but reconnecting them is what allows wildlife and ecological processes to function in a resilient way across the landscape," he said
Bush Heritage already protects more than 7,000 hectares across the Fitz-Stirling region, where decades of conservation work are focused on protecting remnant vegetation and restoring habitat.
Mr Murphy said strategic acquisitions such as Torquata Ridge were essential to maximising the impact of investments in conservation.
"This relatively small acquisition punches well above its weight," he said.
"It reflects the kind of long-term, landscape-scale conservation thinking needed to reconnect ecosystems and safeguard the extraordinary biodiversity of WA's south-west."
This acquisition was made possible through the generous support of Peter Wilshaw, in loving memory of his wife Maxine.
In the coming weeks, 15-hectares of the Torquata Ridge site will be restored with a diverse mix of over 100 native species. The restoration work will include tube stock planting and direct seeding using local provenance seed, helping expand existing habitat and strengthen the corridor. It also builds on the conservation win that was enabled two-years ago when people from all over the country helped Bush Heritage purchase the neighbouring property with the quirky name of Dodgey Downs.
This work also comes following recent infill seeding being completed at Bush Heritage’s nearby Ediegarrup Reserve, where a community planting day is also planned for Sunday 5 July.
Together, these projects contribute to Bush Heritage's work in partnership with Traditional Custodians and other landholders across the broader Fitz-Stirling corridor, delivering landscape-scale conservation outcomes that stretch across this growing habitat corridor and extend far beyond the boundaries of any single reserve.
Bush Heritage Australia is a leading not-for-profit conservation organisation that protects ecosystems and wildlife across the continent. We use the best science, conservation and right-way knowledge to deliver landscape-scale impact. We’re on the ground, working with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and the agricultural sector to make sure our impact is deep, sustainable and collaborative.
