Ecologist wins prestigious ARC grant for work to restore woodlands

Dr Heather Neilly says she became interested in ecology for the same reasons many others do – getting out into the environment with an inherent curiosity about why things are the way they are.

The Future Regions Research Centre ecologist has been awarded a prestigious Australian Research Council Early Career Industry Fellowship worth $453,000 for her work restoring habitat crucial for many threatened species.

Dr Neilly's work focuses on restoring semi-arid and arid zone environments. Her current project is investigating how best to restore function and resilience to one million hectares of degraded eucalyptus mallee woodland.

Her work with Federation began while she was at the not-for-profit Australian Landscape Trust, an organisation that protects and improves unique ecosystems and owns properties in South Australia that are being managed for conservation.

These properties are near the New South Wales border and close to Nanya Station — Federation's famed 40,000-hectare property in far western New South Wales. Nanya has a unique system of natural salt lakes, old-growth mallee, and a variety of intact ecosystems, making it a significant refuge for biological diversity.

"I became aware of Federation Uni's work because I was on a neighbouring property and was lucky enough to go out and visit Nanya and see the work that was happening there," Dr Neilly said.

"Nanya is unique in that it has a relatively light history of livestock grazing. That means it is relatively intact and it's a very healthy system that hasn't been degraded compared to a lot of the locations around it.

"By using it as a reference site, we can get a good idea of what the areas around it should look like based on what Nanya looks like."

It's those neighbouring properties, that combined with Nanya Station, total the one million hectares that will be the focus of Dr Neilly's study.

The project will see her work with industry partners Australian Landscape Trust, the Murraylands and Riverland Landscape Board, the South Australian Department for Environment and Water, BirdLife Australia, Trees for Life, the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service, and the River Murray and Mallee Aboriginal Corporation.

In addition to Australian Landscape Trust's properties on the South Australian side of the border, there is a greater network of connected conservation properties, including a reserve owned by BirdLife Australia, and the South Australian Department of Environment owns a property adjacent to Nanya. To the south, NSW National Parks and Wildlife has the Tarawi Nature Reserve, another vast property with significant ecological importance.

"We have these conservation properties that are linked together, a vast ecosystem that is significant because it is the largest continuous patch of mallee remaining in Australia," Dr Neilly said.

"It's an important place, and we need to focus our work there to ensure that we can conserve this entire area and restore some of the more degraded parts." Dr Heather Neilly

The work will tackle areas that have suffered both light and heavy degradation, and Dr Neilly will look at methods, including novel ways to plant seedlings so they survive harsh and dry conditions and techniques like mechanical root ripping to generate root suckering. These have been piloted at Nanya Station and can now be trailed across a more extensive area.

"The other component of restoration is the native wildlife. We've found through previous work that animals play a really important role in helping to restore the ecosystem," Dr Neilly said.

"The animals that dig in the soil assist with nutrient cycling, and the malleefowl, one of the birds that we have there, build these giant mounds and generate soil microbial activity and elements essential to a functioning ecosystem."

Dr Neilly says it's satisfying to use her research skills to not only work out why something is happening but also improve the way things are done, and to provide advice to practitioners on the ground so that they can do restoration more effectively.

She says she has always done work that has a very applied focus that can "hopefully make differences in how we do conservation in the real world".

"I'm really interested in making sure our research links with industry needs and objectives that actually help them do better restoration on the ground," she said.

"It's also about taking a holistic view of the ecosystem that you're approaching and not just thinking about plants, not just thinking about animals, not just thinking about the soil, but actually looking at all of these things together and how they work together in terms of restoring that environment.

"This is a very unique opportunity, and we have industry partners that are extremely supportive of this work, and it applies directly to how they manage their land.

"I'm hoping we can achieve a lot from this funding."

Related reading:

Protecting Australia’s arid woodlands

Chronicling endangered species on Nanya – a vast biodiversity treasure