{"id":932201,"date":"2026-10-18T04:10:15","date_gmt":"2026-10-18T04:10:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/932201\/"},"modified":"2026-10-18T04:10:15","modified_gmt":"2026-10-18T04:10:15","slug":"celebrating-a-decade-of-was-wheatbelt-conservation-on-the-silver-screen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/932201\/","title":{"rendered":"Celebrating a decade of WA’s Wheatbelt conservation on the silver screen"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ten years of late-night stake-outs and helping threatened species thrive has been captured on film and exhibited on an international stage.<\/p>\n

Australian Wildlife Conservancy (AWC) photographer and videographer Brad Leue has recorded hundreds of hours of footage of native wildlife at the Mt Gibson Wildlife Sanctuary, 360 kilometres north-east of Perth in Western Australia.<\/p>\n

The resulting documentary, Back to the Bush, was selected to be part of the Wildlife Conservation Film Festival.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Footage spanning a decade went into the 21-minute film. (Supplied: Australian Wildlife Conservancy)<\/p>\n

The documentary captures the 10-year effort to bring 10 species back from the brink of extinction, by establishing a predator-free fence.<\/p>\n

Mr Leue said it was incredible to share Australia’s biggest reintroduction project to a global audience.<\/p>\n

“From a storytelling perspective, it’s pretty special in itself,” he said.\"A<\/p>\n

Lots of the released animals, like quolls, build burrows for shelter. (Supplied: Brad Leue\/Australian Wildlife Conservancy\u00a0)<\/p>\n

Mr Leue said the burrowing animals were “ecosystem engineers” and transformed the landscape over the decade.<\/p>\n

“It looks a little bit like a minefield in the sense that there’s just these pits and burrows everywhere,” he said.<\/p>\n

“It’s a taste of Australia before feral predators kind of started to be an issue for all our native wildlife.<\/p>\n

“The country just looks good, it just looks like it’s thriving.”<\/p>\n

\"Early<\/p>\n

Mr Leue says the animals have helped the land thrive. (Supplied: Wayne Lawler\/Australian Wildlife Conservancy)<\/p>\n

Filming hazards<\/p>\n

Mr Leue said recording the often small, nocturnal animals proved challenging.<\/p>\n

He said he used unmanned video camera traps and went on night time stake-outs to try and capture the animals natural behaviours.<\/p>\n

“You do really have to be quite creative, almost thinking like the animal to work out how to get footage of some of these more cryptic species,” Mr Leue said.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Mr Leue says he has to get creative to capture the small critters. (Supplied:\u00a0Andy Howe\/Australian Wildlife Conservancy)<\/p>\n

“As somebody who’s really into their wildlife and gets energised by seeing wildlife, Mt Gibson is paradise,” he said.<\/p>\n

He said he received a ‘few nice little bumps’ from animals leaping out of their cages when released by the AWC.<\/p>\n

Loading…<\/p>\n

Mr Leue said woylies often have “springs for legs”.<\/p>\n

“They’ll just kind of launch one to two meters in the air off into the bush,” he said.<\/p>\n

Work ‘never stops’<\/p>\n

AWC senior wildlife ecologist Bryony Palmer, who was involved from the beginning of the reintroduction effort, said it was surreal to see its long-term impact.<\/p>\n

“When you’re working on it day-to-day, you can sort of lose sight of the bigger picture a little bit,” she said.<\/p>\n

“It’s so rewarding to see these really tangible conservation benefits for all of these different species.”<\/p>\n

Dr Palmer said the project was highly successful.<\/p>\n

“For those species, there’s eight of the 10 present on the sanctuary,” she said.<\/p>\n

“Most of them have populations that are really thriving now.”<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

AWC ecologists slowly released the animals over the past decade. (Supplied: Brad Leue\/Australian Wildlife Conservancy)<\/p>\n

Like Mr Leue, Dr Palmer said the surrounding landscape changed dramatically.<\/p>\n

“You see signs of them everywhere, all their little diggings and footprints and things,” she said.<\/p>\n

“It’s really a feeling of the the bush and the landscape going back to the way it should be.”<\/p>\n

Dr Palmer said the next step was to try and establish some of the species outside of the predator-free boundary.<\/p>\n

“The work never stops,” she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ten years of late-night stake-outs and helping threatened species thrive has been captured on film and exhibited on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":932202,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[128079,64,63,51850,499001,2929,498997,62015,1691,20558,26010,22103,498995,498996,47148,498998,128,499000,9525,45,498999,63811,338],"class_list":["post-932201","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-animal-rehabilitation","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-australian-wildlife-conservancy","tag-awc","tag-conservation","tag-conservation-success","tag-doco","tag-documentary","tag-endangered-species","tag-feral-animals","tag-good-news","tag-mt-gibson-sanctuary","tag-mt-gibson-wildlife-sanctuary","tag-pests","tag-predator-free-fence","tag-science","tag-spring-loaded-woylie","tag-threatened-species","tag-wa-news","tag-what-is-a-woylie","tag-wheatbelt","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/932201","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=932201"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/932201\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/932202"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=932201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=932201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=932201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}