Snow Gum recovering from a devastating fire twelve months ago on our Crooks Racecourse Reserve. Snow gums are incredibly sensitive to fire and normally only resprout from the base. Only around 5% of burnt Snow Gums have epicormic shoots like these which offer a much faster route to restoring big trees in the landscape as compared to the very slow growth of new small trees. With climate change and an expected higher frequency of fires we need to find new ways to manage fire in the high country or we will end up with no grand centuries old Snow Gums left. #snowgums #snowgum #epicormicgrowth #bushfirerecovery #bushfire #climatechange #kosciuszko #australianhighcountry #nsw #australia 
TV-loving house Quoll! This Northern Quoll just loves to pop in to the homestead at Kings Plains for a bit of evening television! Quolls would make great pets except that they don’t live very long. Male Northern Quolls only live for a year, the girls two. At about 11 months old some hormone switch goes off in the males and they just about stop eating and spend all of their time roaming the country trying to mate with as many girls as possible. The females generally have six pups and recent dna research shows that there could be up to six different fathers in the one litter! Sadly Northern Quolls are an endangered species largely due to being poisoned by cane toads. Those at Kings Plains have learned not to try to eat toads #quoll #northernquoll #tvcompanion #animalsathome #australianwildlife #carniverousmarsupials #capeyork #capeyorkpeninsula #northqueensland #australia #endangeredspecies 
NOT a Tree Kangaroo but a Godman’s Rock Wallaby up a tree on our Kings Plains Reserve. It is not at all unusual for rock wallabies to hop up trees, but this behavior does lead to many false reports of tree kangaroos in all sorts of “interesting” locations! This particular Godman’s is just a young one and went up the tree with its mother. Godman’s are not currently endangered but they are very range restricted to a small area of Cape York. They are very vulnerable to habitat loss and feral predators, particularly dogs. #wallaby #rockwallaby #treekangaroo #godmansrockwallaby #macropod #upthetree #capeyork #capeyorkpeninsula #queensland #capeyorkwildlife #australia #australianwildlife 
Hazard reduction is no panacea to bushfire. This area on The Springs was burnt hot in 2018, burnt hot again in 2019, a year later every tree is dead. No evidence of any wildlife here surviving. Close to a biological desert. Fortunately it is only a relatively small area and we have other nearby areas which did not burn and are full of life. In a few years there will be pressure to “hazard reduce” areas like this. As a society we need to think very carefully about what we do as high frequency fire is pretty similar to clearing as far as its impacts on wildlife go. #afterthefires #bushfire #deadbush #newenglandtablelands #westernslopes #nsw 
One of my favorite Wombat photos of all time. A camera trap image of a Joey looking out of Mum’s pouch. As Wombats are big diggers their pouches face backwards. Apparently the first words a baby Wombat learns is “pull your head in” for pretty obvious reasons. Image taken at our Bezzants Lease Reserve on Northern NSW. #wombat #wombatjoey #pullyourheadin #marsupial #newenglandtablelands #northernnsw #motherandchild #animalbabies #nsw #australia #australianfauna #australianwildlife #wildlife 
Camera trap image of a Wombat with attitude from our Bezzants Lease Reserve in northern NSW. The wombat population at Bezzants is important as it is part of an isolated population of wombats in the northern part of the New England Tablelands. Fortunately the wombats on Bezzants are doing really well. They both survived the fires and the relatively lean period food wise immediately after them. #wombat #cameratrap #attitude #newenglandtablelands #bushfirerecovery #nsw #australia #marsupial 
Three quolls in the one image, as bad an image as it might be! Spotted-tail Quolls are endangered. Parts of northern NSW remain a stronghold for them, including our Bezzants Lease Reserve. This camera trap image from just last week shows the tail of an adult female quoll and two of her pups. The third image shows three pups. They would normally have six but not all survive. We don’t know if there were more pups out of shot, but this is the first time we have captured a mother and her pups on our cameras. Besides this family we have picked up at least another five adult quolls on our cameras on the reserve over the past month and a bit. Given the severity of the fire that ripped through this forest almost exactly a year ago we are just so happy to see that so many quolls have survived. Not just for the quolls themselves, but as a top predator their survival indicates a healthy ecosystem. #quoll #spottedtailquoll #spottedtailedquoll #quollpups #wildlife #newenglandtablelands #nsw #australia 
A pair of Eastern Grey Kangaroos enjoying the early morning lagoon side on our Myrtle Creek Reserve. A nice spot for a camera trap. Myrtle Creek features extensive areas of swampy eucalyptus forest with scattered lagoons, the remnants of old creek lines through the swamp. In all there are four endangered ecological communities present which cover the whole of the reserve. It is very sad to think that clearing and development on the NSW north coast coastal plain has been so extensive that almost any vegetation left is endangered. #easterngreykangaroo #earlymorning #kangaroo #cameratrap #northernnsw #nsw #australia #endangeredecologicalcommunity 
A rainforest relict from a wetter time on the hot dry western slopes of NSW. This ancient sprawling Port Jackson Fig is on our The Springs Reserve. There are other scattered Semi Evergreen Vine Thicket species nearby but they are not numerous enough and close enough to form the endangered SEVT ecological community. Still these remnants remind us of the great drying of the Australian continent over many thousands of years and how our rainforests were once much more widely spread. #fig #portjacksonfig #sevt #dryrainforest #ancienttrees #nsw #australia 
A male Northern Superb Lyrebird caught on a camera trap on our Bezzants Lease Reserve on the New England Tablelands. Nearly the whole of the Reserve was burnt in a hot crown fire last December. We feared that the Lyrebirds would have been decimated due both to the fire and to predation by cats and foxes with all of the ground cover gone. Indeed, there have been fears nationally that the fires may have rendered a once common species endangered. Sadly that may well be the case but we put a huge effort into feral control to try to avert the loss of birds. The ground cover is now denser than ever. We are now finding Lyrebirds on almost every camera trap in the forest. A small but wonderful achievement as we continue along this long bushfire recovery road. #lyrebird #superblyrebird #bushfirerecovery @birdlifeoz #birds #australianbirds #newenglandtablelands #nsw #australia 
Carex Sedgelands are an Endangered Ecological Community poorly represented in conservation reserves. This sedgeland is on our The Springs Reserve on the western fall of the New England Tablelands. It was partially cleared by a previous owner and then burnt in fires in both 2018 and 2019, but a very wet winter and spring and the removal of feral herbivores has seen it stage a truly remarkable recovery. #carexsedgegrass #wetlands #wetland #endangeredecologicalcommunity #newenglandtablelands #nsw #australia 
Life after the fires. Been going through motions activated camera cards that we collected today from our Bezzants Lease Reserve which suffered a massive crown fire almost exactly one year ago. While the forest crown still looks terrible, the life on the cameras is just wonderful. So far we have found images of these endangered Spotted-tail Quoll on every card. Also the Superb Lyrebird which was heavily impacted by the fires. And wombats and heaps of wallabies with joeys, lots of echidnas etc etc. And so far no cats, no foxes and no dogs. We have been investing heavily in feral control and it seems to be paying off. Just fantastic to see so much wildlife in such a heavily fire impacted area. #bushfire #bushfirerecovery #wildlifeafterfire #afterthefire #afterthefires #quoll #quolls #spottedtailquoll #spottedtailedquoll #newenglandtablelands #bezzantslease #nsw #australia #australianwildlife 
Ideal Xmas present for the young and young at heart. Witty, fun , informative poems about Australian wildlife. Go to www.faunaverse.com.au @faunaverse_poetry Highly recommended. All of our young relatives are getting them! #poetry #wildlife #xmaspresent #xmaspresents #christmaspresentideas #presentideas #presentideasforkids 
The endangered montane peat swamps at Bezzants Lease are alive with wildflowers. Exactly a year ago these swamps were on fire. Burnt to the ground and losing some of their precious peat. What a difference a year makes! #bushfire #bushfirerecovery #wetland #wetlandfire #endangered #wildflowers #newenglandtablelands #nsw #australia 
Christmas Bells flowering in abundance in one of the endangered montane peat swamps on our Bezzants Lease Reserve. Photo by Bec Ballard. #wildflowers #blandfordia #christmasbells #wetland #new England Tablelands #nsw #australia 
Grey headed Flying-foxes flying over Maclean near our Kewilpa Reserve at sunset tonight. Thousands upon thousands of them. A truly amazing site. Sadly they are threatened due to habitat loss both for roosting and foraging as well as climate change. Heat stress during heat waves is becoming a major threat #bat #flyingfox #flyingfoxes #greyheadedflyingfox #sunset #maclean #northernnsw #nsw #australia