Numbers and diversity of native animals rising at Bon Bon Reserve in South Australia
HUNDREDS of kilometres north of Adelaide is Bon Bon Reserve, a 216,700 ha site. Here, ecologists are monitoring the lives of some of Australia’s smallest animals.
PEERING inside a small animal trap and seeing “big eyes looking back at you” is a thrill for arid rangelands ecologist Dr Graeme Finlayson.
Each of these discoveries is a precious reward for efforts to restore habitat and control feral predators on the former sheep station.
Dr Finlayson, from Bush Heritage Australia, led one of three teams checking the “pitfall” traps in the latest annual survey at Bon Bon Reserve, a 216,700 hectare site west of Roxby Downs in the Woomera Prohibited Area.
The results were encouraging despite dry conditions, with 35 native species identified from a total of 176 animals captured and released.
“I've got a soft spot for those little mammals, I find them fascinating, their life history strategies and survival mechanisms in such a harsh environment,” Dr Finlayson says.
“You get a bit of a buzz when you look down into trap and see these big eyes looking back at you.
“Just the range of species you can get and the understanding that there might be something new, not recorded previously, on the reserve, or new to science. It’s pretty exciting.”
This year’s highlights include finding a Giles planigale (a first for the reserve), a spinifex hopping mouse, a painted dragon, and Burton’s legless lizard.
Bush Heritage bought Bon Bon in 2008. It was used for sheep farming for 130 years.
Restoring the landscape has involved eradicating invasive buffel grass, revegetation with native grasses and shrubs, and removal of rabbits, cats and foxes.
Monitoring of plants and animals helps Bush Heritage ecologists assess how the reserve is responding.
Small animal species diversity and abundance reflects the success of these management actions.
“It's just another measure of how that restoration project is going,” Dr Finlayson says.
“Ultimately, seeing all these little animals around is a good indicator that cat and fox numbers might be low enough to then hopefully look at the next step of doing things like reintroductions of other animals that used to be in the region, so just restoring that overall ecological balance.”
The Traditional Owners of Bon Bon are the Antakirinja Matu-Yankunytjatjara people.