Wadderin Sanctuary is a nature conservation project within the

Shire of Narembeen The Shire of Narembeen is a local government area in the eastern Wheatbelt region of Western Australia, about east of the state capital, Perth, and between the shires of Merredin to the north, and Kondinin to the south. The Shire has a la ...

in the eastern wheatbelt of Western Australia. It is about 290 km east of Perth and 8 kilometres north of the town of Narembeen. Wadderin is surrounded by a fox- and cat-proof fence that was completed in early 2008. This has allowed the reintroduction of fauna that is uncommon or locally extinct in the wheatbelt, and includes species that are considered threatened at the national level. Wadderin is one of very few sanctuary projects within Australia managed by a local community. The community group includes current and retired farmers and townsfolk. Another within Western Australia is the

Heirisson Prong Heirisson Prong is a community managed reserve established for the conservation of threatened mammals at Shark Bay in Western Australia. The reserve is at the point of a long narrow peninsula of the same name that juts into Shark Bay from the s ...

project at

Useless Loop Useless Loop is a town located on the Heirisson Prong on Denham Sound in the Southern Region of UNESCO World Heritage Site Shark Bay, Western Australia. The town of Denham is on the opposite shore of the sound and the more famous Monkey Mia ...

at Shark Bay. These projects were set up to exclude foxes and feral cats and so allow reconstruction of the past native fauna.

Description

Wadderin is 427 ha in area and consists of a series of large granite outcrops surrounded by woodland, shrubland and mallee. It is largely isolated by surrounding farmland. It is poorly connected to bushland to the east (Wadderin Siding Railway Reserve, 175 ha and c. 1.4 km away) and to the west ( Roach Nature Reserve and adjoining bushland, 515 ha and 6 km away). Wadderin is formally a water reserve (#20022) vested for water catchment and supply under the control of the

Water Corporation Water Corporation is the principal supplier of water, wastewater and drainage services throughout the state of Western Australia. It is the seventh successive agency to deal with the services in Perth, Western Australia. With offices in Perth ...

of Western Australia. All granite outcrops have low walls that direct water into channels and eventually into a large holding dam within the Sanctuary. Much of this infrastructure was constructed in the 1920s, yet is still functioning today. In 2004 a licence agreement was established between the

and the

(on behalf of a local community group) to manage for nature conservation and potential future eco-tourism. Construction of the barrier fence commenced in 2006 and was completed in early 2008. Narembeen has an annual average rainfall of 332 mm, with the bulk falling from May to September.

National conservation significance

Wadderin Sanctuary is one of seventeen fenced sanctuaries Australia-wide that have been constructed and maintained to preserve wild, self-sustaining populations of threatened mammals. These sanctuaries exclude foxes and

feral cats A feral cat or a stray cat is an unowned domestic cat (''Felis catus'') that lives outdoors and avoids human contact: it does not allow itself to be handled or touched, and usually remains hidden from humans. Feral cats may breed over dozens ...

, which are seen as the key factors threatening the ongoing persistence of many Australian species of mammals and ground-nesting birds. Collectively, these sanctuaries preserve some 49 populations of 27 taxa of mammals – with Wadderin making a contribution to the preservation of three species ( red-tailed phascogale,

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 ...

, and

banded hare-wallaby The banded hare-wallaby, mernine, or munning (''Lagostrophus fasciatus'') is a marsupial currently found on the Islands of Bernier and Dorre off western Australia. Reintroduced populations have recently been established on islands and fenced ma ...

). These sanctuaries vary in size from 0.5 to 123 km² in area - with Wadderin slightly larger than the median area of 4.0 km².

Fauna

The mammal fauna of the reserve prior to the fencing of the Sanctuary and the reintroductions detailed below included only the echidna, western grey kangaroo, and euro and introduced species such as the fox, feral cat, rabbit, house mouse and black rat. Bruce Leake, a farmer from nearby Kellerberrin, documented the rich past fauna of the eastern wheatbelt in the late 1800s. These included possum, phascogale, tammar wallaby, brush wallaby, rock-wallaby, nailtail wallaby,

, rufous hare-wallaby,

boodie The boodie (''Bettongia lesueur''), also known as the burrowing bettong or Lesueur's rat-kangaroo, is a small, furry, rat-like mammal native to Australia. Once common throughout the continent, it is now restricted to a few coastal islands. A memb ...

pig-footed bandicoot ''Chaeropus'', known as the pig-footed bandicoots, is a genus of small mammals that became extinct during the 20th century. They were unique marsupials, of the order Peramelemorphia (bandicoots and bilbies), with unusually thin legs, yet were abl ...

dalgite ''Macrotis'' is a genus of desert-dwelling marsupial omnivores known as bilbies or rabbit-bandicoots; Unabridged they are members of the order Peramelemorphia. At the time of European colonisation of Australia, there were two species. The ...

numbat The numbat (''Myrmecobius fasciatus''), also known as the noombat or walpurti, is an insectivorous marsupial. It is diurnal and its diet consists almost exclusively of termites. The species was once widespread across southern Australia, but ...

and

chuditch The western quoll (''Dasyurus geoffroii'') is Western Australia's largest endemic mammalian carnivore. One of the many marsupial mammals native to Australia, it is also known as the chuditch. The species is currently classed as near-threatened. ...

. Many of these species would have occurred in the Narembeen district also. Unfortunately, very little of this fauna remains. It has only been comparatively recently that this loss of fauna has been attributed largely to predation by introduced foxes and feral cats. Listed in the table below are the eight species that have been reintroduced to Wadderin Sanctuary since 2009. The category gives the status under the Commonwealth EPBC Act 1999. One other reintroduction is planned – that of the black-footed rock-wallaby. This species status is "vulnerable". The process and outcome of reintroductions of red-tailed phascogale and

brushtail possum The brushtail possums are the members of the genus ''Trichosurus'' in the Phalangeridae, a family of marsupials. They are native to Australia (including Tasmania) and some small nearby islands. Unique among marsupials, they have shifted the hypax ...

to Wadderin Sanctuary have been detailed in scientific publications. The red-tailed phascogale now only occurs in the Western Australian wheatbelt and has been subject to concerted conservation effort by farmers to improve its status. Regular monitoring of reintroduced woylies, quenda, and other species at Wadderin Sanctuary is conducted by scientists and community volunteers
Photography of these activities by Vanessa Hunter, The Australian
Fifty three bird species are known from the Sanctuary. Reptiles include rock dragons ''Ctenophorus ornatus'' (a fast running diurnal lizard abundant on the granite outcrops), bobtails ''Tiliqua rugosa'', western bearded dragon ''Pogona minor'', and Grey's skink ''Menetia greyii''. The chocolate spotted frog ''Heleioporous albopunctatus'' has been observed in the Sanctuary as have tadpoles of an unidentified species of ''Neobatrachus''.

Flora

At least 241 native plant species have been recorded for the sanctuary. The reserve includes areas of salmon gum, York gum, jam and rock she-oak woodland as well as areas of mallee and shrubland. Twelve species of orchids were recorded from the reserve in a brief visit by the WA Naturalist Club in September 2003. Students from Narembeen District High School have been involved in projects to do with plant identification and revegetation within the Sanctuary and in adjoining bushland.

History

There are the remains of at least four water wells which pre-date the establishment of the water catchment scheme in the 1920s. Davis (1977, cited in Laing and Hauck 1997) reported that hundreds of small excavated tanks were constructed in the cereal/sheep area as agriculture developed, at least some adjacent to granite outcrops to take advantage of the regular run-off. Farming began in the Narembeen area ''c.'' 1900. Another possibility is that they were established and used by the early

sandalwood Sandalwood is a class of woods from trees in the genus ''Santalum''. The woods are heavy, yellow, and fine-grained, and, unlike many other aromatic woods, they retain their fragrance for decades. Sandalwood oil is extracted from the woods for us ...

cutters. Wadderin is the site also for Wadderin Hill School that operated from 1919 to 1936. The school site is marked by a plaque within the Wadderin Sanctuary.

References

{{WikidataCoord, Q24185367, type:landmark:AU, display=title Nature reserves in Western Australia Wheatbelt (Western Australia) Protected areas established in 2004