Safeguard a Bandicoot from Extinction

It’s been a quiet end of winter andstart to spring at Woodlands Historic Park.   

The weather has been up and down as Melbourne likes to produce plenty of fluctuations, especially between seasons. A good burst of rain then a very dry start to spring followed by a huge burst of rain which produced the monthly rainfall of October in one day!  This means that the soil is warm with enough water to speed up the grassland's growth.  

The bandicoot habitat looks fantastic. A little more rain would be nice to soften up the soil, so digging for food would be a little easier. But it’s a good start to the drier months. 

What wasvery exciting to see was on a daily patrol of the new northern fence line: some wildflowers were discovered that had never been seen in that area over the last 15 years. This fence line was pushed out approximately 50m further to the north. Previously this area was open to the local kangaroos and was always heavily grazed so there was hardly any grass and definitely no chance of flowers growing.  But nature is an amazing and resilient beast. Seeds and tubers must have been still viable in the soil over that time and the first chance they got up they popped.  

This shows that if you do simple things like protecting the environment with a fence and exclude potential threatsthen nature is lurking ready to repair itself.  The wildflowers seen are quite common across Victoria, but we don’t get them commonly at Woodlands so it’s exciting for the area. The common names for these flowers are milkmaids(white flower) and Bulbinelily(yellow flower).  Of course, the kangaroo, wallaby and spear grass has bounced back as well, providing new habitat nest areas for bandicoots.