Monjebup Reserves

When we secured these three reserves we not only acquired important conservation areas, but also some important pieces of a complicated jigsaw puzzle.

The Monjebup, Monjebup North and Red Moort (formerly Monjebup Creek) reserves protect a significant patch of bushland that's critical to restoring the heavily cleared landscape between WA's Stirling Ranges and Fitzgerald River National Parks.

Our conservation work here is an important counterbalance to decades of land clearing in the area.

It will also help support the Gondwana Link project, a plan to restore a 1,000km swathe of bushland from Western Australia's southwest to the edge of the Nullarbor Plain.

Excitingly, we've completed ecological restoration of just over 400 hectares of cleared land in the north of Monjebup reserve. This will re-establish connectivity between remnant bush to the south and that in the Corackerup Nature Reserve immediately to the north.

The restored bush will add to the importance of the Monjebup Reserves as havens for the vulnerable Malleefowl and Western Whipbird, Carnaby's Cockatoo and the Tammar Wallaby.

All this has been protected thanks to the generosity of our supporters.

What these reserves protect

Monjebup Reserves protect the recently discovered Corackerup Moort, a small mallee eucalypt that in early winter shows off stunning pendulous red flowers. The reserves also protect these significant species and communities:

Animals: Carpet Python, Crested Bellbird, Tammar Wallaby, Black-gloved Wallaby, Malleefowl, Western Pygmy Possum.

Plants: Feather Flowers, Nodding Banksia, Corackerup Moort, Kangaroo Paw, Sandplain Orchid

Vegetation communities: Mallet and moort woodland, Mallee heath, Flat-topped yate, Proteaceous rich heath.

Cultural values

Survey work at Monjebup indicates that Aboriginal people used the area for a wide variety of activities, including gathering raw materials, food processing, hunting, gathering, camping, stone tool manufacture and seasonal movement.

When a bunch of city Noongar kids were taken out of Perth to help map Monjebup's Aboriginal heritage, they were returning to a land their ancestors had walked for thousands of years.

Working with Noongar man Eugene Eades and local tribal elders, they spent five days searching for Aboriginal artefacts and other clues about how the land was used by their ancestors and found artefacts up to 3,000 years old.

What we're doing on the properties

In 2009, one of 20 infra-red cameras dotted across the area caught a species once thought nearly extinct in the region, a Tammar Wallaby.

This was a heartening find, and we've since been working to significantly enhance the prospects for the recovery of Tammar Wallabies in the area by controlling feral animals and restoring the landscape.

Michael Tichbon Field Station

In 2019 the opening of the Michael Tichbon Field Station heralded a new era for field research in the region. For more than a decade, staff and volunteers faced long drives and no accommodation when accessing the reserves – taking time away from their work.

“When we just had a couple of days' work to do, it really wasn't worth putting a tent up for one night, so we used to do a lot of day trips. But then three hours of the day was spent traveling and you got less done”.
– Ecologist Angela Sanders

The new station has transformed the way our staff, researchers, volunteers and partners work by enabling them to stay out in the field longer. Already we've already been able to attract a lot of volunteers and there are new opportunities for community engagement and research with this base to work from.