Monjebup

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 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.

To this end, with our supporters' help we're controlling feral animals and have restored just over 400 hectares of cleared land on Monjebup North.

Cultural values

Early 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 have walked for thousands of years.

Working with Noongar man Eugene Eades and local tribal elders, these kids spent five days searching Monjebup for Aboriginal artefacts and other clues about how this land was used by their ancestors.

During their time at Monjebup they found artefacts up to 3,000 years old.