In 2001, Society Public Officer Peter Clements gave a talk on the ABC Radio National’s Ockham’s Razor show. The talk detailed the efforts of the Natural History Society to establish the Moorunde Wildlife Reserve. Here is the introduction and transcript courtesy of ABC Radio National:
ABC Radio National
Ockham’s Razor
Sunday 14 October 2001 8:45AM
The Founding of Moorunde Wildlife Reserve
Dr. Peter Clements is the public officer for the Natural History Society of South Australia. This environmental society was formed in 1960 to campaign for the protection of endangered native fauna and flora species and their habitat. Dr. Clements talks about the work of this Society and particularly what has been done to protect and improve the numbers of the Southern hairy nosed wombats.
Transcript
Robyn Williams: Last week in this program James Woodford talked about The Secret Life of Wombats, how they were miscast as badgers by European colonists, how the various wombat species came close to extinction.
This week, a simple story of public efforts to save these creatures, and in the process, do much more besides: to rejuvenate a pocket of South Australia so that wild orchids, native birds and much else can return once more to where they flourished.
Dr Peter Clements tells the tale.
Peter Clements: It is my great privilege to be the public officer for the Natural History Society of South Australia. This environmental Society was formed in 1960 to campaign for the protection of endangered native fauna and flora species and their habitats. In January 1967, the Society lobbied the Minister of Agriculture to take measures to protect Southern Hairy Nosed Wombats from extermination by setting up a wildlife reserve in the Nullabor. This was not successful, but it made Jack Conquest aware of the Society’s interest in native wildlife and he asked what the Society was going to do about the starving wombats in the Blanchetown area. Blanchetown is on the River Murray in the Mallee area of South Australia. A number of our members went with Jack to a sheep station, which carried the largest concentration of wombats in the area, and during a two day expedition many unhealthy and dying wombats were seen. There were several carcases of recently dead wombats. The paddocks of the station were almost completely denuded of ground cover vegetation. In December of the same year we witnessed an airborne dust storm over much of this region of South Australia.
At this point it is worth noting that the Southern Hairy Nosed Wombat is different from the common wombat in that it prefers to live in the semi-arid areas, making its burrows under the hard limestone shelf found throughout many regions of the Mallee. These burrows can reach hundreds of meters under the ground and they are the wombats’ temperature control system, by keeping out of the sun during the day and coming out only at night or during cooler days. Our research has shown that it is humidity that most regulates wombats’ emergence.
The Society decided that the owner of the sheep station should be asked if he would be willing to sell part of the station for the establishment of a reserve. It was hard times with the drought, so he agreed that he would be willing to sell 3,000 acres at a price of $4 per acre. It was decided that an appeal should be launched to raise the necessary money.
The Sunday Mail newspaper came out with a three-page spread on the plight of the wombats which resulted in about $4000 of donations pouring in during the first week. The Sunday Mail printed elegant certificates for those who gave donations of $6 or more. One feature of the campaign was the continual appearance of a young wombat named Ernest. During March and April, Society members lectured almost daily at schools, church groups, radio and TV, both in and around Adelaide.
Fetes were organised, many papers, handouts, were printed and widely distributed throughout the State, and daily papers were kept informed A Walk for the Wombats was organised and a doll exhibition was held at a major department store to benefit the appeal. A youth dance was held and the Bank of Adelaide promoted the cause by running a competition to name a rescued wombat and they produced thousands of wombat money-boxes. Many schoolteachers collected from their classes and sent in the money. Wombats which were saved from the drought were put on exhibition at various functions, one of which was the International Exhibition of Photography. Several people gave their time voluntarily during the campaign to appear on television, to lecture and generally to keep the project going.
The Duke of Edinburgh supported the campaign through his message of congratulation to the Natural History Society. Inquiries had been received from as far afield as the United States, Canada and South Africa, and in five weeks the fund had reached $18,000. The owner agreed that a further parcel of 2,000 acres adjacent to the first area would be available. The reserve was established in 1968 and the fund was left open to reach $27,000 by June of 1969.
Much voluntary assistance was received for establishing the reserve. Perhaps the most significant was clearance of vegetation for fencing around the reserve. The naming of the reserve was in recognition of the post of Moorunde, established by Edward John Eyre, which he named after the meeting place of three Aboriginal tribes in the area.
A five wire fence with strainers of railway irons and star droppers reaching five miles around the northern and eastern boundaries of the reserve was built by contractors to separate the property from the rest of the sheep station, with much of the work done voluntarily by our members and friends. The eastern fence was in more difficult terrain and we added wire netting to deter sheep.
Instead of piping water from the nearby Murray-Adelaide pipeline, as agreed to at the inaugural public meeting, we decided to build water collection points with galvanised iron from which rainwater was collected and stored in several tanks. From these, the water was piped to a ballcock regulated cistern, and from there to a small pond constructed of cement and limestone rocks to blend in with the surroundings. Rainfall gauges were also installed at the same time. As a result we have rainfall data on the reserve going back to 1967. More gauges have since been installed, making a total of five at widely spread locations on the reserve, and it is often surprising how much variation in rainfall there is over the 2,000 hectare area. The higher level is usually recorded amongst the more heavily wooded areas.
From the outset the Society has adopted a policy of minimum human interference on Moorunde. In 1988 this was formally incorporated into our management plan for the reserve. This has meant that any recovery of vegetation has been through natural regeneration, rather than through human assisted planting or seeding. A few attempts were made to plant seedlings in the early years but these failed. Natural seeding has met with greater success and since the fencing out of cloven-hoofed stock over the past 33 years, we have seen the re-establishment of many plants. Many that were severely pruned to a mushroom shape by sheep, particularly the sheep-bush and native hops, have returned to their former habit, which extends to ground level, thus providing cover for wrens and other small birds.
Over the 26 years since the exclusion of sheep, we have observed the recovery process, recording on film the gradual re-establishment of many plants. Mosses and lichens were the first recolonisers since they can live on bare soil, deriving their nitrogen from the atmosphere and beginning the process of returning the soil to humus. These plants have not returned on the adjacent station where sheep still graze. There are many species of mosses and lichens on Moorunde and in aerial survey photos we can see that the reserve is visibly darkened, compared with the neighbouring property, and the fence line is clearly visible. We think this is due to the lichen and moss cover that is largely absent on the adjacent property.
Many of the plant species indigenous to the Moorunde area may only re-establish after a significant and sustained rainfall which may only come once every ten or eleven years. Some of these plants are eaten by rabbits, which are not excluded by the boundary fence. Hence very few new native pines, whose tender shoots are particularly attractive to rabbits, were established until poison baiting reduced the rabbit numbers. The use of poison baits was against our policy of non-interference in natural processes; however in 1995, in response to a local council directive, we had to bait with 1080 for the first time. We estimate that we killed over 5,000 rabbits that year. Apart from the legal obligation, it was obvious that rabbits were causing a substantial stress to the native vegetation of Moorunde. We have continued the baiting program each year ever since. Calici virus has reduced, but not eliminated, the need for baiting. Foxes, goats and cats also occur on Moorunde and further management dilemmas arise over the problems caused by these introduced pests.
The re-establishment of several other plant species such as sheep bush and native hops occurs after a wet year. Amongst the more remarkable recoveries have been two greenhood orchid species, Pterostylis biseta and nutica, which we first found on the reserve in 1980, 14 years after the sheep were removed. In 1995 over 2,000 plants of these orchids were counted on the reserve. They grow on the shady southern side of bushes where mosses and lichens keep the soil moist, and there is some leaf litter. The mosses also provide a nitrogen source which sustains termites. Moorunde is now rich in such microfauna as termites and other insects which are in turn food for other species such as echidnas and birds. We have deliberately avoided removing fallen wood on the reserve as it provides food for termites. Wood can also provide scratching posts for wombats and protects seeds and seedlings of other plants, which can then recolonise an area.
The water collection points are a source of dilemma for us. We think that wombats never use this water as no droppings or other evidence of their visits have ever been recorded. As this is the only surface water on the reserve, it seems likely that these remarkable animals have evolved without the need for water and may be able to obtain all they need from their food. However, they have sometimes been seen licking dew from the rocks in the early morning. The water points are used by a variety of birds, red and grey kangaroos and emus, which are all attracted to them in such numbers that the areas immediately adjacent to these ponds, become quite bare and dusty. National Parks officers have suggested that we should take the water points out. However, if we were to do this, kangaroos and emus would only be able to obtain access to free water in the hostile environment of local stock water troughs or from the River Murray several miles away. Moorunde is, after all, a wildlife sanctuary for the protection of all locally indigenous native species, not just wombats.
Glen Taylor, a Fellow of the Society, has conducted a long running wombat population study on the reserve. He has used a chart recorder wired up to flaps with microswitches at 21 burrow entrances in a warren to record wombat activity. After the wombats stopped digging up the wires, he was able to get data which have allowed us to estimate wombat numbers across the whole reserve. One of the immediate and unexpected effects of fencing off the reserve was that we rarely see any wombats out during daylight hours on Moorunde, although we know from our observations that they are present in very good numbers. We must be the silliest Society to be looking after animals we hardly ever see. It is estimated that the numbers of wombats on Moorunde has increased from about 200 in 1968, during that drought, to about 600 to 800 by 2001. Rather ironically, wombats are more commonly seen during daylight hours on the adjacent sheep station, particularly during autumn and winter, before the winter rains allow the grasses to regrow. Moorunde supports a greater standing of crop grasses than adjacent properties. Thus it seems that the removal of sheep as their main niche competitor, other than rabbits, meant that the wombats on Moorunde were fed well enough that they no longer need to supplement the energy they obtain from food, by coming out during the day and basking in the sun.
The Society has taken the view that the reserve is for the wombats. Hence it has been our approach that any activities, including research projects, should be totally non-invasive. The invasion of weeds such as horehound and stemless thistles is a continuing management problem. To keep these in check regular monthly working bees are held and as a result the reserve is one of the most weed free in the State.
In recognition of the work done by the Society, another parcel of land near to Moorunde was given to us in 1992 by the State Lands Department, to be managed as a wildlife reserve. We have again watched the remarkable recovery of vegetation on this reserve after the sheep were fenced out. The efforts made by the members of the Natural History Society of South Australia to raise the funds needed to purchase a reserve to conserve the Southern Hairy Nosed Wombat was a landmark in Australian wildlife conservation. Plant recovery since the sheep were fenced out on Moorunde Wildlife Reserve 33 years ago has been spectacular.
Robyn Williams: And wombat numbers, as you heard, are once more looking good as well. Dr Peter Clements is the public officer of the Natural History Society of South Australia.
Next week Ockham’s Razor comes from Brisbane and asks, in this week of the Nobel Prizes for 2001, why nursing should be considered for a Nobel. I’m Robyn Williams.
Guests
Dr. Peter Clements
Public Officer for the Natural History Society of South Australia,
Adelaide, South Australia
Credits
Presenter
Robyn Williams
Producer
Brigitte Seega