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Heritage

Fifty years ago, a group of people recognised that Queensland had a natural heritage and formed a society – originally the Wildlife Preservation Society of Queensland, also known as Wildlife Queensland – to protect it by all legal means.

Almost immediately, the society was plunged into its first campaign, to protect the globally significant Great Barrier Reef.

When Europeans colonised Australia, Tasmania still supported species that were rare or extinct on the mainland. Now, a mainland sanctuary may help protect one of those species – the Tasmanian devil. The south-west corner of Western Australia is the only home of Carnaby’s black-cockatoo. The birds are threatened by habitat destruction and some illegal shooting, but the loveable ratbags have attracted good friends amongst filmmakers, conservationists, orchardists and other supportive landowners.

And, 150 years ago, some heritage-minded people established a museum in Queensland that still maintains and displays a dynamic collection of objects backed by authoritative scientific research.

In conversation with Rick Dawson

The Carnaby’s black-cockatoo has developed a mobile lifestyle that enables it to match its needs – water, food and nesting hollows – with the availability of these resources in the south-west corner of Western Australia: the only place where the species occurs.

The closer the resources are together, the easier it is for the birds to thrive and reproduce. However, in the past 50 years, land clearing has reduced their habitat by approximately 30 percent, forcing the birds to fly farther and face more dangers.

By Mareike Dornhege

On a sunny Queensland afternoon in 1967, John Büsst told his friend Judith Wright that the Great Barrier Reef was in peril. The Queensland Department of Mines had received an application to mine limestone on Ellison Reef off Innisfail.

Wright and Büsst decided they could not stand by and watch. Wright had only had one brief encounter with the reef – the largest coral reef in the world and one of the greatest of Australia’s natural icons.

That encounter impressed her so deeply that it would change her life and inspire her to help safeguard its future.

By Alex Payne

Watch a Tasmanian devil feeding, and its scientific name – Sarcophilus harrisii, Harris’s flesh-lover – may seem highly appropriate. It’s not flattering, but it could have been worse: Sarcophilus satanicus (satanic flesh-lover), and Diabolicus ursinus (diabolical bear) were among the suggestions.

The viciousness and speed with which a handful of devils can reduce a wombat carcass to only the largest bones is impressive – yet many who have studied our largest surviving marsupial carnivore note their timid nature in the wild and charismatic personalities in captivity.

By Saren Starbridge

This year, Queensland Museum is celebrating 150 years of collecting and connecting. How does it happen? Through recognising significant objects, developing engaging, science-based interpretations, and keeping the collection current – plus a bit of daring, luck and cooperation.

The collection of the Queensland Museum includes more than 1043 million items, from bird malaria parasites (10 micrometres long) to books, papers, plastic chair parts (used in a notorious prison escape), a WWI German tank and a 15m adult humpback whale skeleton. What’s valuable about those 1043 million items? What are the criteria for such apparently eclectic choices?

By Kay Griffiths

If at first your don't succeed, renovate. And hope.

In spring 2010, a pair of Carnaby’s black-cockatoos moved into a nestbox that we had christened the Taj Mahal. It was the first recorded use of an artificial nestbox by Carnaby’s black-cockatoos in the Perth area. Unfortunately, as recorded in ‘Spike: hope, truth and process’ (WAM 48/3), the chick did not reach adulthood. The story continues the following spring.

This pair of Carnaby’s wasn’t mucking around. Maybe they were desperate, but they were certainly quick to make up their minds, and the female decided almost instantly that the Rodatube was where she wanted to raise her family. She took up residence immediately, vigorously repelling other hopefuls with gaping beak and raucous screeching.

By Lee K. Curtis and Peter Hendry

Moths and Butterflies are both in the order Lepidoptera.

Fewer than half of Australia's estimated 22,000 moth species have been scientifically described.

This month WAM features 6 from the tiny 8mm many-plumed moth (Alucita pygmaea) from northern parts of Australia, to the 17cm atlas moth (Attacus wardii), found in a small areas of monsoonal rainforest around Darwin.

• The Atlas of Living Australia
• DevilArk
• Carnaby's Black-Cockatoo Recovery

Editorial, City Animal, Considering, Adventures in Nature Photography, In our hands: Wildlife Artisits, NatureWatch, Books Reviews, Winter Skies, Scratchings and Rustlings, WPSQ in Action, Swamp Cartoon and our regular environmental crossword.

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