Australian Wildlife Conservancy

Uh, so I'm Owen Cumming.

Um, I've done a few different things since graduating from UWA, uh, Master of Science Communication, but at the moment I'm working for the Australian Wildlife Conservancy as an ecologist guide, um, which is a role that kind of gets me involved in both science and science communication.

So, uh, yeah, very exciting.

That is very exciting.

So it's, um, the role as far as I know, uh, is a unique one that, uh, was made up by AWC.

[laughs] So, uh, I kind of have a split role.

Uh, part-time I work as an ecologist, as a, as a field ecologist with the Australian Wildlife Conservancy.

So I go out on wildlife surveys, I set camera traps.

So yeah, fending off green ants as we go.

That's Felicity Le Tellier, a senior ecologist with the Australian Wildlife Conservancy.

The organization wants to relocate around 20 females with young to a 950-hectare fenced predator-free safe haven.

Part of this reintroduction, we've identified four broad source populations.

And one of Australia's rarest birds has a new safe haven.

The Australian Wildlife Conservancy has bought 200 hectares on King Island in the Bass Strait to protect the critically endangered King Island scrub tit.

Fewer than 100 of the tiny birds are thought to be left, which makes them rarer than New Zealand's kakapo.

The group plans to tackle feral cats, weeds, and fire on the island.

A new research programme is looking at ways to control feral cats and protect native wildlife.

In this episode of Weekend One-on-One, SBS Dutch reporter Pauline Rosink spoke to Joey Clarke from the Australian Wildlife Conservancy about the threat that feral cats pose to Australia's native wildlife.

Feral cats have been one of the biggest drivers of extinction for Australian wildlife since they got here.

So cats arrived when Europeans first colonized Australia, and they very quickly spread across most of the continent.

They're more efficient.

And in simple terms, what is this new project now? What are you going to do?

So AWC, Australian Wildlife Conservancy, has been at the forefront of tackling feral cats.

We've been around for 35 years and a big part of our work is creating large fenced safe havens.

That's more than double last year's total, and it's the highest number since the reintroduction of the phascogales into the sanctuary.

The Mount Gibson Sanctuary in WA's Wheatbelt region extends over 7,800 hectares that is fenced to keep out predators and is operated by the Australian Wildlife Conservancy.

And this is just the latest in a series of big wins at the Mount Gibson Sanctuary, which has reintroduced 10 different types of threatened species back into the sanctuary since 2015, including bandicoots, bilbies and stick rats.

And we'll put a link to a short, really interesting webinar about the work the Conservancy is doing at Mount Gibson into the show notes.