Friday, January 28, 2011

Land for Wildlife

Today we were visited by an assessor from the Land for Wildlife scheme, a voluntary conservation initiative for landowners run by the Tasmanian Government, and we've now joined up. We were alerted to the program by two lots of friends and fellow Franklin residents who also participate. One of the things that attracted us to this place is that more than half of our block is bush, and it's full of wildlife. We want to keep it that way, hence the reason we wanted to state publicly that this is what our property will be retained for.
The assessor looked at the habitat and various risks/benefits to wildlife such as water sources and feral animal/plant populations. She asked us to list the animals we've seen in and around our property: wallabies, pademelons, bettongs, quolls, echidnas, wombats, possums, bandicoots, frogs, a whipsnake plus one live and two dead Tasmanian devils. And many different birds, including spotted pardalotes, black cockatoos, fairy wrens, welcome swallows, wedge tailed eagles, grey goshawks. Seriously! It's a zoo out there and we love it.

4 comments:

  1. I hadn't heard of this scheme before. Sounds good.

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  2. Wow they didn't ask us for a list of animals when we joined!
    Bummer about the two dead devils... any idea what killed them?

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  3. The dead devils were on boggy forestry trails behind our place - long dead and we were alerted to them by ravens flying off. Had a look to see if there were signs of the facial tumours but it didn't look like it. So hoping natural causes rather than anything to do with 1080...

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  4. Hmmm nothing much seems to die of 'natural causes' around our place.... people with guns and uncontrolled dogs are not uncommon ones...
    oh well at least there must be devils about in your area, that's positive!

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