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.

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.

A couple of fanstatic community arts projects have taken place across the Dryandra region recently, and today we were lucky enough to film Rebecca Cool, and a host of local volunteers, working on a mural project at the Narrogin Town Hall.

It had been raining over night, and rained intermittently during the day, but check out what five hours of painting looks like compressed into one and a half minutes. 

Rebecca is a well loved Western Australian artist. To visit her website, click here.