Charles Darwin Reserve celebrates 10th anniversary Dr. Matt Appleby, Bush Heritage Australia's ecologist for the Charles Darwin Reserve, near Wubin in the wheatbelt, which has just celebrated its 10th anniversary. Picture: Stewart Allen Source: The Sunday Times TUCKED away in the northern wheatbelt, about 355km northeast of Perth, is a former sheep station turned environmental sanctuary that is now a safe haven to about half of the region's most endangered flora and fauna. Yesterday the private Charles Darwin Reserve - run by Bush Heritage and located within a bioregion that was 93 per cent cleared for agriculture - celebrated its 10th anniversary. See the reserve - gallery To mark the occasion, Bush Heritage released a report on its decade of work, which found the reserve protects up to 61 per cent of the area's birds, mammals, reptiles and frogs and 35 per cent of its plants. This is despite the reserve covering just 68,481ha only 1 per cent of the entire Avon-Wheatbelt Merredin sub-region. Tanami Bayley-Stewart (9) with a variety of flowers from the Charles Darwin Reserve, near Wubin in the wheatbelt, which has just celebrated its 10th anniversary. Among the rare animals that call the reserve home are the Major Mitchell cockatoo, known for its bright red and yellow crest; the mallee fowl; a small, nocturnal marsupial called the white-tailed dunnart; sandalwood, a tree valued for its aromatic oil; and a rare, wiry wattle known as acacia cerastes. It was established in 2003 with the help of a $300,000 donation from Charles Darwin's great-great-grandson, Chris, out of his inheritance. When Bush Heritage took over the lease, the old station was degraded, riddled with weeds and teeming with feral goats, cats and foxes. Bush Heritage ecologist Matt Appleby said the team had worked hard to eradicate the pests and let the natural flora and fauna return. Dr Appleby, who has worked at the reserve for six years, said the reserve was "absolutely important." "This property is located within the most cleared bioregion within the South West Botanic Hotspot and anything that's left in it is a treasure," he said. If we had been clever about things when we first started clearing for agriculture, we would have left examples and good intact landscapes there and not left tiny little remnants that have no hope in hell in 50 years, 100 years of surviving. Ecologist Angela Sanders with a Sandy Inland Mouse caught in a pitfall trap at the Charles Darwin Reserve, near Wubin in the wheatbelt, which has just celebrated its 10th anniversary. Dr Appleby said their work was fuelled mostly by donations. However, Healthy Landscape manager Luke Bayley, who lives on the reserve with his wife and two children, said such reserves could become a new economy. "There's a lot of similar work (to be done here) as there is on a pastoral property, except we're farming biodiversity, not sheep or beef," he said. It's a product and people are prepared to pay for it and whether that's through the open market carbon trading is one element of that and there could be other biodiversity, environmental economic mechanisms, but our economy is not set up for that at the moment. He said the mission for Charles Darwin Reserve was not to necessarily recreate what was once there, but allow the environment to stabilise itself. Phd student Tim Doherty with a Western Saddle Ground Gecko at the Charles Darwin Reserve, near Wubin in the wheatbelt, which has just celebrated its 10th anniversary.