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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2024-11-28 Daily Xml
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Arid Recovery

Mr HUGHES (Giles) (14:48): My question is to the Deputy Premier. Can the Deputy Premier update the house about the Arid Recovery program?

The Hon. S.E. CLOSE (Port Adelaide—Deputy Premier, Minister for Industry, Innovation and Science, Minister for Climate, Environment and Water, Minister for Workforce and Population Strategy) (14:48): I am delighted to update the house about the Arid Recovery program, which many but perhaps not all members are aware is a reserve area above Roxby, funded in part by BHP and also by the Department for Environment, Bush Heritage and the University of Adelaide. It started off at about 14 square kilometres of fencing when it was first conceived of as being something that could be helpful for restoring habitat and, most importantly, bringing back species that have been absolutely hammered by foxes and cats. Now, it covers some 123 square kilometres and has 80 kilometres of specially designed predator-proof fencing, within which the kinds of marsupials that used to be abundant in South Australia's outback are able to breed up.

Last week, I was very fortunate to attend Government House where the Governor, having been and visited the Arid Recovery program, had offered to host the people involved—the board, the volunteers and also the staff and the fundraisers—to come and have a celebration at Government House about the experience and the successes of Arid Recovery. It was a very worthwhile event. It was, in part, sadly, a farewell for Dr Katherine Tuft who, as the chief executive, I understand, has now got another position down in Tasmania and is very excited about that, but she will be an enormous loss.

Just to let people know, often when I stand up in this chamber and also in my joyful interventions in cabinet discussions where I tell people how bad climate change is and what is happening with nature across the world and in South Australia, in contrast to those experiences, there are some very good stories to tell about what is happening with the environment as well, due to the direct intervention of people who want to see the regeneration of nature—not just stopping doing bad things but actually starting to bring nature back, and Arid Recovery is one of the shining examples of that.

There are six species that have become functionally extinct in South Australia that now have been reintroduced thanks to Arid Recovery. Their capacity to not only bring those species back but also then start to see the transformation of the local environment is as significant and important as, for those people who have seen it sweep through YouTube, the putting back of the wolves in Yellowstone National Park in the US, which not only was wonderful for the wolves but started to transform that area back into more natural environment. It is exactly what is able to happen in South Australia as well and, I must say, I congratulate BHP on their role in helping to fund this.

The six species that have been reintroduced that had been locally extinct are the greater stick-nest rat, the burrowing bettong, the greater bilby, the western barred bandicoot, the western quoll and, most recently, the kowari. Interestingly, the plains mice, which had also gone missing, reintroduced themselves. We hadn't actually managed to find any and then they suddenly managed to find their way into the protected area and breed up enough to be rediscovered as a local population. In fact, there are so many of those inside that reserve that it is being used as a place to be able to take extra animals and put them into other conservation reserves.

I won't go through in detail each of the recoveries for those animals, because I do want to also note a nice little sideline to Arid Recovery, which is the success of having women involved in science. As I understand it, of all the papers published associated with Arid Recovery, women were the lead authors in 65 per cent of the papers and there were a total of 104 female authors in the sciences in scientific papers produced through Arid Recovery—nothing but an absolute shining light, both for science and for nature, and I congratulate them.

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