We recently visited the Mount Rothwell Sanctuary in Melbourne’s west. Originally created by John Wamsley, this 420 hectare predator-proofed sanctuary was bought in 2004 and is currently operated by the Odonata Foundation. When I first visited in 2009 it was the only place left where the original mainland stock of Eastern Barred Bandicoots occurred. This privately-owned and operated reserve has done what no government-funded initiative ever managed. It secured the species’ future. Today, 9 out of 10 of remaining Brush-tailed Rock Wallabies have a home here, and nowhere else. It’s from these humble beginnings that animals like this can be seen elsewhere in Victoria today and in the future. But what is the normal number of animals?
A visit to the Rothwell Sanctuary offers us this glimpse. We live in empty countryside when in reality, our native fauna could be super-abundant. What’s more, we could be saving ourselves billions of dollars a year, and creating better livelihoods for ourselves, if we allowed them to once more proper in our landscapes.
Mount Rothwell represents an oasis of biodiversityWhat is the definition of biodiversity? When we ask, what is the definition of biodiversity? It depends on what we want to do with it. The term is widely and commonly misused, leading to significant misinterpretation of the importance of how animals function on Earth and why they matter a great deal, to human survival. Here I will try to More that could flood the remaining landscape with benefits.
Animal impact of normal numbers of native wildlife
When I first visited in 2009, the site was still fairly new. The number of animals was still impressive. Returning this year, 11 years later and I could see the structure of the grassland had changed. There were more tussock grasses. The animals burrow, dig and scrape their way across the landscape. By creating these micro-environments, they engineer habitatsWhat is habitat for animals and people? Habitat, hence the word "habitable" describes the natural surroundings in which any animal (or human) lives, that houses basic needs, such as food and shelter. Vegetation, for example, is habitat for animals. On its own, habitat is not necessarily stable or sustainable, which is why it differs from an ecosystem. Habitat in disrepair More for invertebrates, birds and other small mammals. The consequence is that the sanctuary has seen a decline in the need to manage weed pests. By creating vegetation diversity, wildlife reduces the opportunity for a weed to become widely established. The annual cost of weeds in Australia is thought to be up to $6 billion dollars. In reality, the loss of wildlife translates into a much greater impact on society.
The declining productivityThe power of an ecosystem to process energy. The most productive ecosystems have reached a steady stable-state with maximum entropy production. That’s to say, the number of species has reached an optimum and the functions they fulfil, have translated free surplus energy into nutrients that is either stored inside plants and animals, or is entrained within the biological cycles that More of land affects our primary producers and has a knock-on effect on our whole economy through food prices. Even preserving ‘headlands’ of habitat for wild birds and animals has been shown to be very effective at maintaining ecological processes such as soil and water. It’s good for business. Mount Rothwell represents an oasis of biodiversity that could flood the remaining landscape with benefits.
The normal number of animals
This is a surprisingly hard question to answer. But there is one fact we know that I may come back to and explain in a science article later. Smaller animals are supposed to be exponentially more abundant than big ones. For every human being, there should be many many small rodents, marsupials, mammals and birds. There are now roughly 40 to 60 birds per human worldwide, while “in Britain there are approximately 2 to 3 birds per head of human population” Tomasik, 2019. This is after we’ve lost about 10 billion birds from global flyways.
At the Mount Rothwell Sanctuary, there are currently estimated to be about:
- 120 Eastern Quolls
- 250 Brush-tailed Rock Wallabies
- 500 Southern Brown Bandicoots
- 2,000+ Eastern Barred Bandicoots
That’s about 3,000 animals living in an area of 420 ha, or about 714 animals per square kilometre. For comparison, Melbourne’s human population density is among the highest in Australia, at about 450 people per square kilometre. But in Victoria, this is about 24 people per square kilometre.
Man is the loneliest animal
If we want a healthy environment to live in, we need to get this balance right again.
“Man is the loneliest animal”
– All That Breathes, 2022
This brings me to this powerful quote from the 2022 Oscar-nominated wildlife documentary ‘All That Breathes.’
The film follows a family of Indians living in the back streets of Delhi. They are on the poverty-line, their son can’t leave the house due to air pollution, but they are devoted to saving as many kites (birds of prey) as possible. The birds are suffering from disease and pollution, literally falling from the sky. They know the kites keep the environment clean. They can’t imagine a world without them.
Our problem is the opposite. We can’t imagine a world with an abundance of wildlife. When animals become abundant our institutions resort to killing them. Mammals like Eastern Barred Bandicoot are effectively extinct from the places we live. This isn’t normal. Abundant wildlife is supposed to live around us.
This is why the work being done at the Rothwell Sanctuary is so important.
Support the Rothwell Sanctuary
If you can support them, they are currently raising money to fix the water tank, which supplies drinking water to the critically endangered Brush-tailed Rock Wallabies.
