Photo by Jessica Wyld Photography.On the southwest coast of Western Australia, the Stirling Range emerges from the earth like the spine of an ancient dinosaur.
Beneath it, on the rugged open landscape that stretches 70km to the extraordinary heathlands of the Fitzgerald River National Park, stands a rudimentary basecamp filled with researchers and scientists, nature enthusiasts and students.
For the past ten years, these people have worked diligently to restore the land that was cleared for farming, back in the 1950s.
It’s part of a bigger plan to reconnect 1000km of country from Margaret River to the Nullarbor Plain – a global biodiversity hotspot.
“We’re operating in a really important part of the continent,” says Bush Heritage’s Gondwana Link Landscape Manager Simon Smale.
“The area we’re working in now has been badly fragmented by a burst of clearing from agricultural development. We’re progressively buying and conserving properties to protect the bush that is left, while also physically restoring and reconnecting the wider landscape.”
Already, they’ve made enormous progress. Over the past three winters 1,000 acres of cleared country has been restored back to bush by direct-seeding, supplemented by the planting tens of thousands of seedlings – a physically demanding job made possible by the hard work and dedication of stakeholders, partners and volunteers.
But what’s really exciting to Simon is the ground-breaking work being done to monitor the wildlife, led by Bush Heritage ecologist Angela Sanders.
“What sets this project apart is the rigour of data we’re collecting,” Simon says. “This is robust, world’s best-practice fauna monitoring which is rarely coupled with revegetation projects.”
Four different fauna monitoring methodologies are being used to record how birds, mammals and reptiles are using the landscape. Simon and his team also have a range of other projects on the go, including re-planting proteaceous species, such as banksia and grevillea, an important food source for the Carnaby’s cockatoo.
BUSHTRACKS 21/12/2015
At first glance, the striped legless lizard looks like a tiny colourful snake, with pink sides and a yellow throat. But its thick, fleshy tongue is unforked, it has visible ears, and two scaly flaps as hind legs. It munches on moths, crickets and spiders, and can spring more than 10cm into the air.
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We are hosting a new research project into how far south in Queensland’s Daintree River lowland forests the near threatened Bennett’s Tree Kangaroo may exist. After a sighting of a juvenile close to Palm Road in the Daintree, tree roo expert and author Roger Martin visited our Fan Palm Reserve in northern Queensland to investigate the southern range of this iconic Australian marsupial.
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Out on Bon Bon Station Reserve, the heat can sear your skin and leave you breathless. And yet this massive piece of land, which rivals the size of Sydney, is home to some of Australia’s most extraordinary creatures like the southern hairy-nosed wombat and the rare chestnut breasted whiteface. Here's how we manage wildfire risk for Bon Bon’s diverse plants and animals.
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The Tasmanian Midlands is a biodiversity hotspot, and refuge for dozens of nationally threatened species and nearly 200 plants and animals threatened in Tasmania.
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The Northern quoll, a nationally endangered species, had never before been recorded in the rainforests, or wulo, of Wunambal Gaambera Country. To see a healthy population is exciting, and demonstrates the good results coming from our partnership with the Wunambal Gaambera Aboriginal Corporation.
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In West Arnhem Land, we are working with the Nawarddeken people whose Indigenous Protected Area covers 1.4 million hectares of natural and cultural treasures. A biodiversity survey was conducted over 10 days in Baby Dreaming Country, a significant cultural site in the northern region of the Warddeken Indigenous Protected Area (IPA), a full day’s drive from Darwin.
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There’s no doubt that Bush Heritage volunteers are some of the best in the business. They roll up their sleeves to pull weeds. They battle aching muscles and clammy heat to plant seedlings. And they spend hours pouring over documents to help with our research. So it made perfect sense to tap into their knowledge and expertise with the establishment of our very first Volunteer Advisory Committee.
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