Wild Deserts | Non-profit organisation

Wild Deserts

Phone: +61 8 8091 3881

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• Non-profit organisation
• Environmental conservation organisation
• Wildlife sanctuary

25.01.2022 We can't quite believe it, but we received 100 mm of rain in 24 hours at Wild Deserts yesterday! This is the largest rain event we have recorded and one of the biggest rainfall events in the last 10 years. The frogs are already out and calling and we can't wait to watch the transformation. We will be sure to keep you posted!

24.01.2022 It's been a great year for the desert Trilling frogs (Neobatrachus sudellae). They can spend many years buried deep underground waiting for rain - but not in 2020! Multiple rainfall events this year have allowed them to emerge from their burrows and successfully breed. Check out these three stages of juvenile development found by our staff in one of our wetlands this week. A large tadpole starting to grow legs, a froglet still with a tail, and a slightly more developed froglet that has almost lost its tail bud. It looks like a new generation of frogs are on their way. These seasonal conditions are really important for ensuring these frog populations persist into the future.

17.01.2022 Do you have experience catering for large groups/ Do you enjoy working as part of a team? Are you longing for a trip to the green desert? Then we may have the volunteer opportunity for you. We are seeking a volunteer to cater for our survey in April (see poster below for more information). Please circulate among your networks.

16.01.2022 That's a wrap on our 2021 pitfall surveys. One week, 6 teams, 20 field personnel, 35 survey sites, 420 individual pitfall traps set, checked, and packed up ready to do it all again in 2022 phew! To find out what species are living out on the Wild Desert dunes and swales, we use pitfall lines a series of polypipe sections sunk into the ground connected by netting to capture animals. The netting guides scurrying creatures into to the pits where they can be retrieved, id...entified, and released shortly after. Every year these surveys help us compare changes in the diversity and abundance of our wildlife inside our predator-free exclosures with the areas outside in both Sturt National Park and across the border in South Australia. Take a look at that green vegetation dotting the red sandhills on our survey site "W1" in 2021 (and compare it to the same pitfall line in the grip of the dry of 2019)! The good rainfall we’ve had in the last 12 months has been amazing for the desert fauna and we recorded an abundance of reptiles, mammals and invertebrates during these surveys. Stay tuned for more updates once we've crunched the data, but for now we’d like to extend an enormous "thank you" to our army of hard-working volunteers who helped us achieve this gargantuan undertaking! #WildDeserts #UNSW #UNSWbees #NSWnationalparks #SturtNationalPark

15.01.2022 The first bilbies have been born at Wild Deserts in Sturt National Park just 5 weeks after the adult bilbies were released! Our team were very excited to find that two of the female bilbies had two pouch young each during a recent health check. Bilbies have a very short gestation period of just 14 days and are known for breeding quickly once reintroduced into a new area. It looks like the bilbies from Taronga Western Plains Zoo haven’t wasted any time since release to their new home. This is really great news for the future success of this bilby reintroduction in our partnership with NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service. Photo credit: Hannah Nichols

11.01.2022 LAKE PINAROO RAMSAR SITE IN STURT NATIONAL PARK IS FILLING FOR THE FIRST TIME IN 10 YEARS! For the past five years, our on-site staff have lived opposite a dry lake bed, but last week’s rain has started to fill the lake for the first time in 10 years and we are really excited. Lake Pinaroo is a Ramsar site, an internationally recognised wetland of importance. It is a huge wetland, almost 7km long and covers nearly 800 ha. The lake rarely fills because it requires large rainf...all events across the Frome Creek catchment to fill Frome Swamp, which then overflows and fills Lake Pinaroo (see map). The widespread large rains of Monday, March 22, 2021 have done just that! Once full, the lake can hold water for several years, with the last filling event in 2010. This provides really important breeding habitat for waterbirds, a stopover for migratory shorebirds, and helps the survival of threatened plants and animals in the local area. We are looking forward to watching the changes across the lake with our partners NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service and to keeping you updated. Once the main roads open, others will be able to visit and witness this rare and spectacular event a large lake in the middle of the desert, which will become an oasis of life!

07.01.2022 Wild Deserts is now home to at least 49 juvenile mulgara! We have recently completed our 3-month post-release trapping and are very excited to report that in addition to 9 of the reintroduced females, our team also caught 49 independent juvenile mulgara. This is really exciting news and means we meet our short-term success criteria for our first translocation with NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service . We look forward to catching up with them next year to see how they ar...e getting on. Photos: T Korn

07.01.2022 The photos we have all been waiting for baby crest-tailed mulgara! Once mulgara pouch young get too large to carry on the teats, females leave them in a burrow while they go out to forage at night. Most of the reintroduced female's pouch young are now old enough to venture out of the burrow on their own and seem to be having a great time exploring. This is great progress towards creating the next generation of mulgara at Wild Deserts! Mulgara were the first species reintroduced in our partnership with NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service for Saving our Species.

04.01.2022 Just like other species such as possums and quolls, it seems that when it’s time to move home, female crest-tailed mulgara load their babies onto their backs to carry them. It looks like hard work, especially when they get quite big! Camera traps set at mulgara burrows have captured some great photos of some of our females moving their young to a new burrow.

02.01.2022 Wild Deserts in Sturt National Park is now home to its very own Big Things! Already there has been lots of buzz from passers-by since these spectacular marsupial sculptures arrived. These enormous art pieces were fashioned from recycled pieces of wire netting left-over from the construction of our 50 km fence network, built to keep out feral cats, foxes and rabbits. These safe-havens are where our reintroduced threatened mammals will thrive, and now three of these species hav...e been immortalised as giant public art. The Big Bilby can be spotted guarding the NSW, SA and Queensland border at the Cameron Corner gate, and The Big Quoll can be seen at the Fort Grey Campground; both were created by Gold Coast artist Ivan Lovatt Sculpture. The biggest of all (at 5 metres long and 3 metres high!) is The Big Bandicoot, by Coonamble artist Brian Campbell Art, which is hard to miss when you travel by our new Wild Deserts Visitor Area on The Dunes Scenic Drive. This art trail was commissioned as one component of the "Sturt's Steps" project, proudly funded by the Infrastructure NSW under the Restart NSW program. It's part of a major NSW Government funding boost to our partners at the Milparinka Heritage & Tourism Association for an initiative that retraces the journey of explorer Charles Sturt through this country. During his exploration of western NSW, Sturt recorded several small native mammals which disappeared from the area following the arrival of feral pests in the decades following his visit. In partnership with the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service, Wild Deserts is working to restore this desert landscape, including the reintroduction of locally extinct mammals such as bilbies, bandicoots and quolls. We've been overwhelmed by the enthusiasm of locals and visitors alike. If you're lucky enough to see these characters when you’re out here on a visit, use the hashtags #BigBilby, #BigQuoll, #BigBandicoot and #WildDeserts so we can share your pics of our newest desert neighbours. #sturtssteps #TheBigBilby #TheBigQuoll #TheBigBandicoot #NSWNationalParks #UNSW #UNSWSydney #CentreForEcosystemScience #TarongaConservationSociety #EcologicalHorizons #Figure8Contracting