Habitat conservation & biodiversity
Willera Merino's is a leader in the active protection and investment in restoring natural capital on farm and we understand it is our responsibility to create a clean and rich, biodiverse environment. As not only does a healthy environment support the positive wellbeing of our people, but it also creates a resilient and adaptive ecosystem in which to raise livestock.
We are committed to protecting and enhancing the unique biodiversity of the land across all our sites - the Loddon River Flood Plain, Southwest Victoria and at Wargum, Boorooban (40km south of Hay, NSW). We do this by supporting local Landcare initiatives using the best available science and natural resource management practices across all farming environments.
"Land conservation and biodiversity are an important part of our farming business, a high-quality natural environment critical to our ability to raise high quality animals."
Revegetation of the landscape
In Serpentine Victoria, investment in conserving remanent Box-Gum grassy woodlands has sustained threatened species such as the Bush Stone Curlew.
The Bush Stone Curlew is a large, nocturnal bird with favoured habitat in open plains and woodlands, stalking the ground at night it looks for invertebrates like insects. The curlew is reasonably common in northern Australia, however in the South the bird becomes more rare.
In Victoria, this species of bird is ‘endangered’ and the population in the mid-Loddon having dramatically declined in the last sixty years.
As well as this, Willera has enhanced the ancient stands of the Red Gums along the river by planting native bush vegetation, fencing off these areas from livestock to reduce erosion, increase eco system function and improve water quality.
Willera were also early adopters of the Bush Broker scheme in Victoria, a program managed by the Victorian Government to improve the quality and amount of native vegetation in Victoria.
This program has been in place for 10 years and will continue long into the future.
Wargum Lakes
Further north at ‘Wargum’ in NSW, we have established a partnership with the Biodiversity Conservation Trust, to preserve more unique habitat around the Wargum Lakes.
This unique location is a mix of flat grazing country, wetlands, native bushland, and grasslands in the Murray Riverina region. It forms an important home to two endangered species, the Southern Bell Frog, and the Plains-wanderer. The Plains-wanderer is critically endangered and much effort has gone into protecting their habitat in the Southern Riverina region of New South Wales. Habitat structure is very important for this species, with a preference to semi-arid, native grasslands and their evolution can be tracked back 60 million years.
In terms of the Southern Bell Frog, Wargam Lakes has been an important site of the NSW Government’s Saving our Species Southern Bell Frog conservation project since late 2017. The lakes are a major breeding site for the threatened species, supporting possibly the largest known population in that area, with hundreds of these large frogs heard calling from the lakes each spring and summer.
