Paruna Wildlife Sanctuary is a

nature reserve A nature reserve (also known as a wildlife refuge, wildlife sanctuary, biosphere reserve or bioreserve, natural or nature preserve, or nature conservation area) is a protected area of importance for flora, fauna, or features of geological or ...

in the Avon Valley, north-east of

Perth Perth is the capital and largest city of the Australian state of Western Australia. It is the fourth most populous city in Australia and Oceania, with a population of 2.1 million (80% of the state) living in Greater Perth in 2020. Perth is ...

in south-west

Western Australia Western Australia (commonly abbreviated as WA) is a state of Australia occupying the western percent of the land area of Australia excluding external territories. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Southern Ocean to th ...

. It is in the Avon-Wheatbelt

Bioregion A bioregion is an ecologically and geographically defined area that is smaller than a biogeographic realm, but larger than an ecoregion or an ecosystem, in the World Wide Fund for Nature classification scheme. There is also an attempt to use the ...

and is owned and managed by the

Australian Wildlife Conservancy The Australian Wildlife Conservancy (AWC) is an Australian independent, nonprofit organisation, working to conserve threatened wildlife and ecosystems in Australia. This is principally achieved through the acquisition of extensive areas of land ...

(AWC).

History

Paruna Wildlife Sanctuary consists of several properties consolidated to form a corridor between the Walyunga and

Avon Valley National Park Avon Valley is a national park in Western Australia, 47 kilometres northeast of Perth. It was named after the Avon River, which flows through it. The area is an undulating plateau with the sides of the valley steeply sloping back to the ri ...

s. Negotiations during the 1990s culminated in its formal opening in 1998. Since then areas previously cleared have been subject to a rehabilitation program, and walking tracks constructed for public use.Paruna: History
/ref>

Landscape and climate

Paruna is in the

Darling Range The Darling Scarp, also referred to as the Darling Range or Darling Ranges, is a low escarpment running north–south to the east of the Swan Coastal Plain and Perth, Western Australia. The escarpment extends generally north of Bindoon, to th ...

, a landscape of hills along a rocky escarpment, with river valleys. The climate is

Mediterranean The Mediterranean Sea is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by the Mediterranean Basin and almost completely enclosed by land: on the north by Western and Southern Europe and Anatolia, on the south by North Africa, and on the e ...

with winter rainfall and dry summers. Average annual rainfall is .

Ecosystems

Most of the reserve is dominated by

wandoo Wandoo is the common name for a number of Western Australian ''Eucalyptus'' species, all of which have smooth white bark. The original "wandoo" is ''Eucalyptus wandoo''. Additional species have been given this name because of a perceived likeness w ...

and powderbark

woodland A woodland () is, in the broad sense, land covered with trees, or in a narrow sense, synonymous with wood (or in the U.S., the ''plurale tantum'' woods), a low-density forest forming open habitats with plenty of sunlight and limited shade (see ...

s, with extensive areas of

heathland A heath () is a shrubland habitat found mainly on free-draining infertile, acidic soils and characterised by open, low-growing woody vegetation. Moorland is generally related to high-ground heaths with—especially in Great Britain—a cooler ...

and some patches of

jarrah ''Eucalyptus marginata'', commonly known as jarrah, djarraly in Noongar language and historically as Swan River mahogany, is a plant in the myrtle family, Myrtaceae and is endemic to the south-west of Western Australia. It is a tree with roug ...

and marri forest. Flooded gum and

paperbark ''Melaleuca'' () is a genus of nearly 300 species of plants in the myrtle family, Myrtaceae, commonly known as paperbarks, honey-myrtles or tea-trees (although the last name is also applied to species of ''Leptospermum''). They range in size f ...

occur along the Avon River.Paruna: Ecosystems
/ref>

Fauna

Significant mammal species present are chuditch and

honey possum The honey possum or noolbenger (''Tarsipes rostratus''), is a tiny species of marsupial that feeds on the nectar and pollen of a diverse range of flowering plants. Found in southwest Australia, it is an important pollinator for such plants as '' ...

, while an important bird is Carnaby's black-cockatoo. In collaboration with CALM, and with an ongoing program to control exotic predators such as

fox Foxes are small to medium-sized, omnivorous mammals belonging to several genera of the family Canidae. They have a flattened skull, upright, triangular ears, a pointed, slightly upturned snout, and a long bushy tail (or ''brush''). Twelve sp ...

es, various native mammals that would have occurred on Paruna in the past are being successfully reintroduced. These include the

woylie The woylie or brush-tailed bettong (''Bettongia penicillata'') is a small, critically endangered, gerbil-like mammal native to forests and shrubland of Australia. A member of the rat-kangaroo family (Potoroidae), it moves by hopping and is acti ...

quenda The southern brown bandicoot (''Isoodon obesulus'') is a short-nosed bandicoot, a type of marsupial, found mostly in southern Australia. It is also known as the quenda in South Western Australia (from the Noongar word ''). Taxonomy George Shaw ...

, black-flanked rock-wallaby and the

tammar wallaby The tammar wallaby (''Notamacropus eugenii''), also known as the dama wallaby or darma wallaby, is a small macropod native to South and Western Australia. Though its geographical range has been severely reduced since European colonisation, the ...

.Paruna: Wildlife
/ref>

References

External links

* Nature reserves in Western Australia Australian Wildlife Conservancy reserves 1998 establishments in Australia {{Australia-protected-area-stub