Day 483 | Mt Gason Creek: with swarms of small black ants
69 km | zzOz total: 15,481 km
Just before my campsite for tonight I came across a rabbit and livestock exclusion fence for the rare Mt Gason wattle.
There were plenty of specimens inside and a few escaped beyond but frankly the other vegetation looked the same either side of the fence. There were a few burrows around and the fence is not in great repair.
I didn’t spot many, any, seedlings.
Considering the wattle was only named in 1978 and not exactly widespread you’d think that national parks would follow through with their conservation plan, but I guess when there’s redundancies and cost savings some projects fall victim to the loss of corporate memory.
I heard rumours of similar issues with the Queensland Bilby conservation efforts, one of the truly cute looking marsupials, you can tell I’m a fan, once common in NSW and Victoria and now confined to small areas between Boulia and Birdsville in the eastern states, there’s still populations across much of Western Australia.
A large exclusion area was constructed with an electrified perimeter fence and then all cats and dingos were, err, exterminated, from the zone, all at a cost of $12 or $15 million. Then it was allowed to self-manage, ie, further resources were not forthcoming, in the interim there were two major flood years and when the zone was resurveyed to see how the Bilbys were getting on the fence was found to be breached in a few places the cats, etc, were back, and you can guess the rest of that sad story.
Seems pretty obvious that if you set out with these important species conservation plans that you have to commit to the long haul.
It’s all long term out here.