Rewilding the Desert: saving threatened species

We're excited to share with you that we have been successful in receiving a grant form the Victorian State Government's Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning to redevelop our wildlife education and captive breeding facility. This is a critical milestone for the project as it will allow us to bring back to the Wimmera, for the first time in over 100 years, locally extinct, nationally threatened species; including: the burrowing bettong, western barred bandicoot, brush-tailed bettong and spot-tail quoll.

By creating safe havens and returning locally extinct native wildlife back to the Wimmera, we will contribute to a network of predator proof facilities and help prevent these species from becoming extinct.

Another objective of this project is to develop a high-quality wildlife education and engagement experience to improve Victorians' knowledge and awareness of biodiversity and wildlife conservation issues. By highlighting the plight of these locally extinct native species, and housing them in our safe havens at the Little Desert Nature Lodge, we will create a rare and unique chance for the community and visitors to see, experience and connect with, our cryptic threatened species, and thereby increase knowledge and awareness of these species and their conservation issues.

Throughout this project we will provide opportunities for volunteers and the community to participate in a meaningful wildlife conservation project and connect with nature by helping us construct this unique wildlife facility.

While we are working on the redevelopment of our captive breeding and wildlife display facilities to house and breed these rare native animals, we are continuing to develop and progress our research and rewilding reintroduction program. However, before reintroductions begin we still need to make some critical upgrades to our external predator proof fences. To make this happen we need your support to buy rolls of wire, netting, fence pins, posts and screws! So please continue to give generously!

To our amazing supporters and donors, we would again like to say thank you! Without your support we cannot continue this critical project and help conserve Australia’s weird, wonderful and highly threatened native wildlife. We look forward to keeping you up-to-date with our progress throughout the year.

As spring weather warms Victoria’s Little Desert, Little Pygmy-possums and other native animals are becoming more active, making this a perfect time to undertake wildlife monitoring for our Rewilding the Desert initiative. Wildlife monitoring is the most effective way to get a clear picture of the state of the desert ecosystem and the species that live in it.

Using humane catch and release methods and supervised by our experienced ecologists, our volunteer citizen scientists have been counting, measuring, recording and safely releasing mammals, reptiles and invertebrates, and recording data on vegetation, soils and habitat. This year’s trapping program has brought us another delight, this Little Pygmy Possum (pictured above) we nicknamed Matilda! Although Matilda is nocturnal and looks like she is asleep, she is actually in torpor; a type of short term hibernation. Matilda uses torpor to conserve energy when it’s too cold outside or there is a shortage of food.  Weighing in at only 4.5 grams (about the same as a dice), Matilda forages mainly on nectar and pollen from flowering plants - one of her favourites is the big bright banksia flowers like this Desert Banksia pictured below.

In other news, we are still preparing for our trial reintroduction planned for this time next year, but there is still much more work to be done. Before reintroductions begin, we need to make some critical upgrades to our external predator proof fences and improve our captive breeding and wildlife display facilities to have the capacity to acquire, house and breed these rare native animals. To make this happen we need your support to buy rolls of wire, netting, fence pins, posts and screws! Please consider sharing our story with your family and friends to help us achieve our goals and provide a wild future for our much loved native animals, like Matilda.

We’d like to say thank you again to our amazing supporters and donors! Without your support we cannot continue this critical project and help conserve Australia’s weird, wonderful and highly threatened native wildlife.

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