Fauna field day 2012 - Meeting powerful wildlife

A group of 20 local landowners recently enjoyed some hands-on wildlife encounters at Rummerys Hill, 20 kilometres north of Glen Innes. They got to see and handle a snake, spiders, lizards, frogs, bats, possums and even a mouse-sized dunnart.

These animals were found on a wildlife survey commissioned by the Rummerys Hill Landcare Group and conducted by Phil Spark of North West Ecological Services.

Group Coordinator, Peter King said the survey showed that the lightly-cleared Rummerys Hill area is important to wildlife as habitat and as a travel corridor that links the western slopes to the eastern ranges.

We found that Powerful Owls, Australia's largest owls have moved west from their stronghold in the eastern ranges and now live here, feeding on this woodland's many possums.

It turns out Rummerys Hill is also habitat for some special wildlife such as koalas, squirrel gliders and the woodland birds that are disappearing in many other places' Peter said.

Landowner Mahri Koch said that handling live funnel-web spiders took a bit of getting used-to but it was great to see all the frogs, lizards and other hidden wildlife of the area.

Landowners did see cuddly wildlife too, including five different bats, a ringtail possum and her baby and a fearless little dunnart. The dunnart is a mouse-size marsupial but quite different to a feral mouse. Indeed the dunnart won some fans when it was explained that it is very clean, harmless to humans and just loves to eat insects, spiders, centipedes and scorpions.

As Emmaville landowner Lee Morgan said, "we loved the day and learned heaps of stuff!"

All wildlife was released live at its point of capture and the wildlife survey was federally funded through the Glenrac local Landcare network.