Grassland Habitat Decline on Moorunde Wildlife Reserve
Native grassland is an essential part of the habitat necessary for a healthy population of wombats. The images below illustrate the decline and deterioration of these grassland areas on Moorunde Wildlife Reserve since 2011. Scroll down to read the story. Click here to see the effect on wombats over the past few years.
The wombats are so desperate for something to eat they dig up the ground over summer and autumn (when it is dry), searching for introduced Thread Iris corms, as seen in the foreground outside the protected enclosure.
The introduced and unpalatable onion weed is even…
…thinned out by this constant digging, leaving huge…
…areas of land bared and exposed and covered with…
…“potholes” that hold rainwater because the soil has been “hard-panned” due to the constant dry digging. Very little rainwater soaks in…
…and most of it evaporates. Then, because the soil particles have been broken down to a fine dry “slick” in the potholes, capillary action in the soil is enhanced causing salt-containing ground water to rise to the surface…
…where the salt concentrates and becomes toxic to plants. The bare patches seen below are the old “potholes” now silted up with very fine particles of soil. The salt concentration conductivity…
…was measured at 40dS/m, close to that of seawater! (50dS/m). Even in midwinter, plants cannot grow on these areas, which expand to form…
…salt pans! Where the only plant to thrive is Onion Weed, a plant that can even grow when irrigated with seawater. These large bare areas were measured at 58dS/m, more salt concentrated than seawater. AND, if it wasn’t for the Onion Weed, ALL of the foreground in this picture would be bare!
Mind you! The wombats are not the only ones digging up the ground. The NHSSA newsletter article below may fool some, but it hides the true scale and primary cause of the decline of grasslands on Moorunde Reserve.
Hand hoeing/digging over 1,000 hectares of land infested with Onion weed [NHSSA President’s Report] is somehow called “managing the reserve”. Will this really fool members and donors?
Grasslands are in decline. Desperate wombats are damaging large areas of surface soil. Salinity is rising and saltpans are forming. With no plan to actively re-establish native grasses, Onion Weed is the only thing preventing large scale soil erosion.
