Part Six of the Biodiversity Guides has come out, and they are all getting lots of people excited about visiting the region and learning about the plants and animals. The numbat guide remains the popular favourite. We are working on two more wildlife guides: How to Track an Echidna in the Wild (Highbury based) and Birds of Dryandra National Park. Exciting!

In the collection as of June 2017 is:
Foxes Lair Reserve
Yilliminning Rock
Lake Toolibin
Yornaning Dam
Railway Dam
How to Spot a Numbat in the Wild

Come in a grab yours. They're free. 

Since I was very young I have always had a passion for wildlife, especially wildlife spotting. It probably started when my parents would take me and my sister on safaris in Southern Africa. We enjoyed the challenge of finding as many animal species as possible in the amazing National Parks.
 
Western Australia’s mammal emblem, the numbat, always intrigued me, and when I first visited Dryandra Woodland I fell in love with the area due to the open woodland habitat and the variety of wildlife found within. It bought me back to those safari days in Africa.
 
Finding a numbat in the wild is a challenge I compare to finding a leopard in the African savannah. I drove through a National Park in Namibia from end to end, covering every track possible, and on day three of my 15 day journey I had two separate leopard sightings.

Fantastic!

Did I have any more leopard sightings after that? No.

That is what it is like for numbat in places like Dryandra, Boyagin and Perup. The numbat are out there and you have every chance of a sighting, but do not be disillusioned if for hours, days or maybe even a few times going to these reserves you do not have a desired result.

And so we have covered the first two important points of numbat spotting:

PATIENCE and LUCK! 

Click 'read more' to see a gallery of Sean's incredible numbat photos.

Zooniverse needs your help! But...what is ZOONIVERSE?

The Zooniverse is the world’s largest and most popular platform for people-powered research. This research is made possible by volunteers - hundreds of thousands of people around the world who come together to assist professional researchers. Our goal is to enable research that would not be possible, or practical, otherwise. Zooniverse research results in new discoveries, datasets useful to the wider research community, and many publications.

At the Zooniverse, anyone can be a researcherYou don’t need any specialised background, training, or expertise to participate in any Zooniverse projects. We make it easy for anyone to contribute to real academic research, on their own computer, at their own convenience.
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You’ll be able to study authentic objects of interest gathered by researchers, like images of faraway galaxies, historical records and diaries, or videos of animals in their natural habitats. By answering simple questions about them, you’ll help contribute to our understanding of our world, our history, our Universe, and more.

With our wide-ranging and ever-expanding suite of projects, covering many disciplines and topics across the sciences and humanities, there's a place for anyone and everyone to explore, learn and have fun in the Zooniverse.

We are absolutely delighted to announce our newest ecology project, Western Shield – Camera Watch. This project has been built by researchers in Australia using our project builder. They need you help to look through thousands of camera trap images from Western Australia and identify the animals you see in them. Get involved right now at www.zooniverse.org/projects/birgus2/western-shield-camera-watch

Written by the Australian Wildlife Conservancy. Photos copyright AWC.

AWC has just completed an historic translocation of numbats from the largest feral cat-free area in Australia (Scotia Wildlife Sanctuary) to the second largest cat-free area in Australia (Mt Gibson).

This is the first translocation of numbats back to Western Australia and is a critical step in preventing the extinction of this endangered species.

Nine numbats were airlifted from Scotia Wildlife Sanctuary in western NSW and released within Mt Gibson’s 7,800 ha feral predator-free area early last week. The numbat has an estimated population of less than 1,000 mature individuals and is declining, primarily due to predation by feral cats and foxes. This is the first translocation in a series of proposed numbat translocations to Mt Gibson. Working with the WA Government and Perth Zoo, AWC will establish a genetically diverse founder population, which is expected to grow to around 240 Numbats – increasing the global Numbat population by almost 25%! For more information on this project and how you can help save the Numbat, visit http://australianwildlife.org/…/mt-gibson-endangered-wildli…
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AWC ecologists are radio-tracking each numbat daily to monitor the success of the translocation.

Ed: Many thanks to the AWC for providing this article to the DCVC. Numbats are endemic to the Dryandra region, and you can follow more about the local numbats on this Numbat Taskforce facebook page.

We just wrapped up five days at the Perth Caravan and Camping Show. 

We were happy to promote the region to travellers from all over the world, and to see a lot of friendly faces who were familiar with some of our big draw cards. Barna Mia was high on people's hit list. People also made enquiries about camp grounds at Dryandra Woodland. 

We had lots of enquires about numbats, of course, and heard many wonderful tales about encounters with them, stretching back generations!

We were surprised to hear that a lot of people living in the Perth hills around Kalamunda had quendas (southern brown bandicoots) in their gardens!

You can see quendas (Noongar: kwernt) at Barna Mia. It gets sensational reviews on TripAdvisor and is the Number 1 attraction in Dryandra.