NEWS
I find a very nice surprise this afternoon when I check my emails – there’s one that says “Congratulations, Regenerative Agriculture Demonstration approved”. My project application is to install about 1km of stock-exclusion fencing, and I’m delighted it’s approved! More delighted over a proposed fence than you can probably imagine. This fence will protect a beautiful remnant of powderbark wandoo woodland, its floor thick with years of fallen bark, and weed-free – but grazed by horses and sheep in the past, with virtually all the understorey plants eaten away. It is only four months since I bought this lovely piece of land, and this $5000 grant from RegenWA is a great boost to get things moving straight away on the regeneration of the bushland …
The woodland area is, for now, surrounded (and protected) by a canola crop – but once the crop is off, sheep may be in the paddock again. I’m leasing the arable land to a great neighbour who will keep the firebreaks and fences maintained, but who is too busy with his own fencing to take on any extra for me. The first step is to find a fencing contractor who will be happy to time the construction of the fence around the trees to fit in the narrow window between the harvesting of the crop and the arrival of the sheep.
With the crop acting as a seasonal protective moat every year around the woodland, I find that seasonal orchids are coming up thickly, abundantly, amazing me every time I step into the little forest. What else is hidden under the ground, waiting to germinate and grow, given the right opportunity, the right protection?
I’ve started reaching out to fencing contractors for quotes to work out what would work best for our project.
Meanwhile, we’ve marked out two 10m x 10m plot in the forested area as sample sites to watch, to measure regeneration and regrowth in over the years. We take the start-up photos – the photos are entirely fallen wandoo bark. Beautiful bark, but, no plants at all. The sheep, the horses and the resident roo have eaten everything that tried to grow, it seems.
But then, at a hilltop location beyond the sites, we find, under a fallen tree and protected by twigs and sticks, some exciting understorey – an uneaten leschenaultia biloba! And, seemingly miraculously, it has seeded about fifty new little leschenaultias all around it! The little plants growing out from under the log are being eaten back a bit, by the roo (judging from the scats), so we place a few strategic fallen branches over some of them, to give them a better chance of growing to maturity.
And later I purchase an additional 20 seedling lechenaultia biloba, and my family helps me plant them out in the two test plots, breaking up the gravelly soil so that the roots have a good chance to get down deep. Some of them we protect from the roo with tree guards, (the only kind of sleeve that I can find to buy in person is plastic; I buy them reluctantly – I will have to research other options); some of them we protect with stick teepees. I’m worried the combination of the sun and the plastic will cook the little plants and I expect the teepee option to give a better success rate. I intend to fairly trial each option but my bias shows and at the end we have more plants protected by sticks and less in plastic.
I’ve read that infill understory planting works best out from under the canopy of existing trees – but shade seems really desirable. So we plant some in the open and some in the shady areas under trees, some under young trees and some under ancient trees. One test site is on a gravelly eastern facing slope where a winter creek starts, but the ground is really solid clay, really hard to dig. The other is in a mulchy area with deep bark and the ground is softer, relatively speaking, and there is a fallen log to plant against, in an effort to mirror the location where the self-sown seeds have been so successful.
More orchid varieties are flowering. Mum and Dad lend me an orchid book to start identifying them. I begin looking with new eyes at leaf shape, bud shape – I’m not always in the right spot at the right time to see the short-lived flower and so I have to work from leaf alone… I start engaging with citizen science resources like i-naturalist and orchid identification group socials to learn from those who are finding similar things and know what they are from long experience. I look forward to the time when I too have acquired this experience, this long association, this local knowledge.
I download an app for recording frog calls that my brother tells me about, after a chance meeting he has with a frog scientist who is looking for a rare wandoo woodland frog. I start recording and identifying frog calls in the degraded creekline and tiny soak below the wandoo hill here. The frogs I record turn out to be Bleating Froglets – but apparently different frogs call in different seasons. I wonder what other frogs live here? Maybe, just maybe, a wandoo woodland frog? But it seems to be too rare for the Australian Museum’s frog ID app to mention it so I don’t know when to listen out for it. I’m reading up on riparian restoration now and one day I hope to have this little wetland salt-free, restored to its former glory, full of life and diversity and birdsong. I want to turn things around, make this a good home for frogs that lately have become rare, due to widespread waterway degradation.
A pair of robin-redbreasts appear close at hand whenever I come to the creek or the hilltop, there are often mapgpies warbling, red-tailed black cockatoos beating slowly across the sky and alighting in the marris, their babies calling incessantly, and a host of tiny birds are busy at every level of the woodland, their songs a sound that rises and falls as they fly high or low.
My grant application was for fencing and a botanical survey to measure quantifiably the change that installing a fence makes. I won’t need to pay a botanist to do a baseline vegetation survey for us. Firstly, the fence installation is going to take all the grant money, and then some more. Secondly, there is only one plant type to identify in our two marked-off sites, and I can identify it myself: powderbark wandoo. By the time we need to do a five-year survey I will (hopefully) be familiar with a lot of the plants that will (hopefully) come up here. And keep growing to maturity without being eaten off, once the fence is in.
The infill plantings are looking like they might not make it through the summer without extra watering. We decide to water very fortnight, about 4L each, to get the water down deep to encourage deep root growth. And we make slow-release water-drippers from 2L milk bottles to try to tide through each two-week period to the next deep water. We secure these carefully so they don’t blow away when empty. And we hope for the best.
Meanwhile we’ve also started watering the (miraculous) self-sown little plants that have come up near our infill plants, to help them keep them going through their first summer. Perhaps the seeds liked having the extra water in the ground here? Or perhaps they would have come up here anyway, have been coming up in this bush every year but getting eaten off by stock? Perhaps there is an enduring seedbank all through this bushland?
We’re still watering our infill plantings to keep them alive. But on the hilltop (not in our test sites! Why not?) tiny wispy endemic plants, probably less than a year old, are flowering! I don’t recognise this plant at all. It doesn’t appear in my growing collection of wildflower books donated by family and friends. My daughter tells me I’ll have to go to the herbarium if I want to ID it … But I don’t want to remove it for the sake of identifying it! There is so much to learn, but I don’t want ‘knowledge’ of the place to become more important than the place itself. All these fragile-looking and unlikely plants can keep growing as they are growing, and I will look on with delight, and not mind too much if I can’t name them.
Late January – sheep in the paddock and my hilltop is not yet protected by a fence! There’s no fences between this place and the next two farms, due to the fact that all three were until recently all owned and cropped by the same person. But with the sale of the three titles to three different people, me included, the lack of boundary fences becomes important. The sheep have come up the hill from the furthest farm, and when I happen upon them they are walking around my treed-hilltop, through the dry canola stalks, like water flowing around an island. But later I find where they’ve been into the trees, and walked right across the top of the hill, strands of wool are hanging from tree-trunks and large areas of ground are disturbed. There is also quite a lot of manure left in their wake, and some of it I pick up and move out to the arable paddock area, worrying about weed seeds being imported into the bushland. But I don’t have much time and I stop collecting the sheep manure and hope it is ok to do so. Instead I water the infill plants, which seems urgent. But later I wonder if my choice – leaving likely weed seed in the woodland – might have a lasting detrimental impact.
The slow-release watering seems to be helping. We haven’t lost any more of the leschenaultia we planted, though they are still struggling. By contrast, the self-sown, self-regenerated little plants that came up in spring in the East site are looking really good and strong, despite the demands of surviving summer. There’s four little plants that are turning from a few leaves into little round bushes the size of a very small apple.
The leschenaultia test planting has taught me that seed provenance matters. Existing local plants have developed the right kind of DNA to thrive in this particular area with its particular soil, this rainfall, these temperatures. Even the self-sown leschenaultia plants are yellowing a bit now, at the end of summer, but compared to our infill seedlings, they are thriving. There’s only six of the original twenty purchased seedlings left now, despite hand-watering every two weeks across the summer. Those six were all growing within protective sleeves / tree guards – the plastic coating might have protected them from the drying wind as well as the roos. At any rate, the infill plants without a tree guard perished sooner, despite the same watering regime.
I talk to Apace about the origin / provenance of the seeds they could grow me for tubestock but they don’t know, don’t have that information. I enrol for a seed collection workshop scheduled for October so I can learn the rules for seed collecting as well as the methods; I’m keen to provide my own seed from the small but specialised collection of understory plants already growing at my place.
Late March – not much rain yet. Some thirsty woodland creature has been dragging the water reservoirs away from the leschenaultia and tearing small holes in the corners to get at the water. It also has shredded the base of some of the tree-sleeves – it must be trying to get the condensation? Might it be a phascagale? A chuditch? A possum? A family of possums? It’s thirsty, whatever it is, and strong, and determined. I’m happy to know there’s such a creature that calls this woodland home.
There’s fresh scats on the log in the west site. I send photos off to a post-doctoral scientist who is researching inland fresh water at Curtin Uni and will be coming to our place to do eDNA testing of the dam and creek water in the winter: I know scats aren’t his expertise but he might know someone who knows…
We make a new water supply in the west site especially for the creature to drink from – a 2L container buried in the ground, filled with stones to ensure that no small creature like a lizard could possibly fall in and drown, and then filled with water. Every time we come the stones have been dug out, so the creature can get to the gradually lowering water level. We fill the stones back in and fill the water up. The reservoirs for the plants now stay in place, and there is no more guard-shredding happening either. Hooray! But what is it that wants water on this hilltop?
My daughter, an ecologist, offers to install two camera traps focused on our two regen pilot sites.
And we find bright-white bunny orchids for the first time in this woodland, two different kinds, known as ‘common bunny orchid’ and ‘Easter bunny orchid’.
I start talking to my friends about whether we can possibly do our own fencing of the hilltop as I’ve had no luck in getting affordable quotes so far, but my neighbour tells me to be patient.
We only leave the camera up for four days because really heavy rain is forecast. But even so, the camera shows a possum coming in for water! I’m in awe at its ingenuity and skills in getting to the available (bottled) water before we made the drinking station. We’re glad for the rain. It’s a late season. Even the self-sown leschenaultia have yellowed off significantly and we hope they’re going to come good now with the start of winter rains.
I start documenting black cockatoo sightings for a Wheatbelt NRM research project, Protecting WA Black-Cockatoos. And in late May, the Wheatbelt NRM come out to chat to me about a possible black cockatoo conservation project I could join in on. They walk through the woodland and we talk about the diggings, and the scats, and the woodland itself, and they instal two rain-proof cameras for a month, one on the west site and one in the creekline.
Progress! We have locked in a fencing contractor who agreed to meet me on the hilltop to check out the area to quote, and will commence work once the hay paddock is in.
I try to keep out of the way of the cameras as I look for orchids in the woodland. And there are new germinations! Tiny conostylis, and running postman, and a myriad of small leafed seedlings which I can’t identify until they get a bit bigger are coming up across the hill. There are also a myriad of grasses. Which are endemic, and which might have come in with the sheep manure? I wish I knew! The herbarium … I may have to find out about public access to the herbarium.
The camera results are in! On the hilltop, near a hollow log, an echidna! A big echidna, photographed coming out of the log! Also there are a pair of yellow-rumped thornbills recorded, by day. And the possum, streaking through a night shot. Down at the water in the creek, the robin appears, glowing in late afternoon light, as well as a bronzewing, a red-capped parrot, a white-faced heron and, by night, a kangaroo. Unwelcome nocturnal visitors include a feral cat, a feral fox and a rat. The cat is recorded four times across the month; the fox visits six times. I’m gutted. Of course I knew there might well be foxes and cats predating in this area as they do all over the state, but to see their sharp shapes at this little creek brings it home. I worry for the robin pair, and the baby robins, and all the birds, and the frogs, and lizards, and marsupials…. How are they to thrive, or even survive, with two quite constant feral hunters after them?
The date for the long-awaited eDNA testing of the waters on this property comes around at last. The two scientists encourage us in our regeneration efforts, they talk with us of our plans for wetland regeneration and salt management, they give us a contact who may have free seedlings.
The free seedlings are a reality. We are invited to a carpark event in White Gum Valley where lots of different growers have donated their unsold stock at the end of the proper planting season. I frantically make lists of endemic plants found in surveys of the National Wandoo woodland not far from our place, I take my lists to the plant give-away to make sure I only collect the right species. And I collect 200 plants endemic to our area, and now is the time to plant them! We plant them on the slopes between the paddock and the creekline, to help with managing and slowing water-runoff, and to take up nutrients from the crop fertilisers, and to work towards lowering the water table and turn around the beginnings of salt that are visible on the crust of the creekline soil. We install tree guards, this time biodegrable recycled cardboard sleeves made locally in WA, around many of them. Will the cardboard provide the same condensation benefits as the plastic? I hope so! It will shade the soil around the roots in any case. Some of the seedlings get tried and true plastic sleeves – we’re still experimenting, still trialling what works and what doesn’t.
A whistler of some kind sings sweet and clear high up in the wandoo, and as I leave one day I see the robin red-breasts sitting preening in the trees above the possum’s freshly filled drinking water container – they must have had a shallow bath in the possum’s drinking water. How lovely! Mountain ducks take off from the dam when we drive in to this paddock, five of them – we’ve seen them frequently here over the last few months. Maybe they’ve been nesting near here?
I’m reading a pamphlet about Wandoo regeneration and the author, the government agency now known as DBCA, suggests that well-controlled burning is useful, that a short-lived hot fire can help with regeneration of Wandoo as it triggers a release of the seeds stored high in the standing trees, as well as benefitting germination of seedbank seed. I know that ‘right-way fire’, as practiced by Aboriginal communities I’ve worked with, can have great beneficial environmental effect, and can readily be mosaic-patchworked to allow bush creatures to move out of the small burning zone to the larger non-burning zone around. And that this practice safeguards the bushland creatures for future years as the recently burned areas become a safe zone, a low-fuel area, in the event of a lightning-strike wildfire. I see that the local Indigenous Rangers are winning national awards for their recent right-way burning for the Shire – perhaps in the future I can talk to them about a small, controlled, winter burn here, in this bushland? I would want plenty of fire suppression on hand before anyone lit anything near this beautiful remnant of mature forest. Maybe a portion of one test site, less than 10m x 10m, would be a good place to consider a well-managed winter patchwork burn? Maybe on the down-wind edge of the woodland, so that new baby wandoo trees could spread out from the existing woodland boundaries, would be ideal? Next year in winter, perhaps I can plan something with the Rangers?
At the creekline our infill plantings are looking good, with about 80% success rate so far. Interestingly those that have died are nearly all the same species – the calothamnus sanguinea. Maybe they have low salt tolerance? Maybe they were more rootbound than the others? Maybe they would have preferred the gravel on the hill instead of the clay around the creek? Maybe the one week over 30 degrees was just too much for them. More trials needed.
Styliddiums – trigger plants – a multitude of kinds are flowering now on the hilltop! Little rosettes of green send up spindly stems that burst into butterfly-like flowers. And scented sun orchids, brilliant blue, come up and bud and then flower amazingly for a day or two in the nearby reserve and along the road reserve too. So far there are none in under our trees. One day there might be, I hope! Some of the earlier-flowering orchid varieties (April flowers) have by now been successfully pollinated and have set big seed cases, and I am glad for the thousands of tiny, tiny seeds inside, waiting for the right moment. Other spikes are just that, a stalk; the flower heads have been eaten off by the roo, or perhaps the possum. I’m glad that many of the orchids spread underground, that their future population is safe from endemic herbivores.
One Saturday lunchtime we’re sitting quietly in the shade up on the hilltop. We’re thinking about whether we have enough gates and emergency access points in the fenceline that will finally materialise this week, between the new shiny strainer posts already in position. We’re talking about ways to increase the connectivity of this woodland to the reserve and the dam and the creek, for animal movement, when we hear a sound like whirring, like scratching sticks. We’ve not heard this before and we both start to attention, looking for a small bird, quite low to the ground. Then the sound stops, and restarts about 10 metres away. But we saw no bird move! Again the sound stops then restarts, even further away. We’re puzzled. I wonder if it might be a frog instead of a bird, perhaps even the rare wandoo frog? I pull out my phone and turn data on for the frog ID app, and record the sound, try to match it up. The sound is quite a lot like a Wheatbelt frog call. Or perhaps a Humming frog – but apparently they don’t call in November. Maybe a Shoemaker frog? I load the recording and wait for a frog scientist to verify the species in a week, or a month. Later, at the wet and reedy area in the creekline I record Western Banjo frogs, and Motorbike frogs, and the Bleating froglets are quiet this time …
On the dam, a pair of ducks leads a straggling brood of ten or twelve ducklings from the water to the sheltering overhanging trees when they see us come over the hilltop – Australian wood ducks, I think, as they’re a greyish-brown, but we stay at a far distance so it’s not easy to tell. One day I will know all of the birds here with certainty. Meanwhile I’m glad of them, that despite the lack of connectivity of this woodland to a bigger woodland, yet they are here and they are thriving. I worry for the ducklings.
(Though I hated putting the first of the prescribed fox baits out a few days ago, yet, for the sake of the ducklings and the possum and the echidna, I steel my nerves to see out the planned baiting period. I’m required by law to take measures to control foxes and feral cats on my land, I remind myself; I’ve done the DPIRD training and been accredited and have the permit and have notified, and discussed this, with all the neighbouring farmers to make sure people and working dogs alike are safe and don’t stray here where there is now 1080 bait out for the fox. I remind myself that this is the best practice for fox control (apart from shooting, which is not an option for me), and that I’m following the instructions of DPIRD and the Wheatbelt NRM to the tee, cautiously, feeling that one person’s actions can’t make much of a difference to a problem so big, and fighting that feeling. I’m wishing that the whole wheatbelt could do something at the same time, in a coordinated manner, to make a significant change to fox and feral cat numbers. Some districts and shires do an annual Red Card event, but not this one… Well, I’m doing my part and that’s really all I can do. )
At the creekline, the plants that were looking good last month are still looking healthy. We’ve been watering them fortnightly, helped out by ongoing rains – 34 mm in early November was a bonus! The infill leschenaultia on the hill are looking dry already compared to these plants at the creek, that collect the runoff from the hill. So much to think about going forward! So much good change has already occurred in a little more than a year! And one new wandoo seedling has come up by itself, in a cleared area here near the creek. I’m elated!
I’m looking forward to getting the eDNA results in due course, to finding out in detail what calls this place home. The next steps are to continue finding out how to make this a home that endemic species will thrive in, be safe in, be protected for future generations.
This demonstration site was supported by funding through the Western Australian Government’s State NRM Program.
