Webinar: Purchasing Dodgey Downs
Find out about an incredible opportunity to connect our neighbouring conservation reserves, Red Moort and Monjebup, and reconnect fragmented landscape in Koreng Noongar Country, Southwest Western Australia.
When we secured the Monjebup and Monjebup North reserves we not only acquired important conservation areas, but also some important pieces of a complicated jigsaw puzzle.
Monjebup Reserve was purchased in 2007, with the addition of Monjebup North in 2010.
Together they 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.
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Alex Hams with seedlings for revegetation work. Photo Krysta Guille.
Excitingly, we've restored just over 400 hectares of cleared land in the north of Monjebup reserve. This has re-established connectivity between remnant bush to the south and 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 is protected thanks to our generous supporters.
What Monjebup Reserves protect
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.
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Carnaby's Cockatoos at Monjebup. Photo Krysta Guille.
What we're doing
In 2009 an infra-red camera captured a Tammar Wallaby - once thought nearly extinct in the region. We've since been working to enhance their recovery by controlling feral animals and restoring the landscape.
New seedlings continue to be steadily introduced to the restoration site and our ongoing surveys have confirmed species such as Malleefowl and Carnaby's Black Cockatoo.
Artificial nest boxes put up in the area provide shelter for tiny Honey Possums and Pygmy Possums, which have been quick to take up residence.
Cultural values
Surveys indicate that Aboriginal people used the area for a variety of activities, including gathering raw materials, food processing, hunting, gathering, camping, making stone tools and for seasonal movement.
When a group 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.
