Nature

The snowy blossoms of an old pear tree peek out from their winter pods. A warming sun throws dappled light onto a clump of emerging daffodils and as spring blinks and awakens there is a rustle in the...

CSIRO scientist Dr Denis Anderson recalls his entry into the bee business. “Well, I grew up out the back of Temora [NSW] on a farm,” he says. “I was a kid who loved walking in the...

Researchers at Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve in the Australian Capital Territory have become the first to breed the critically endangered northern corroboree frog in captivity. In the wilds of the ACT,...

It’s 8pm on a balmy evening west of Longreach, Qld. On the lookout for wildlife, Steve Wilson and Angus Emmott are driving along a secluded, hot, damp road. The conditions are ideal for...

 Watching Rob Bredl work with dangerous animals is as mesmerising as watching motor racing on a wet track. You just wait, heart in mouth, for an accident to happen. But this seasoned bushman,...

  This spring, there’s more than one reason to drink to the health of Australia’s rarest marsupial. Although there are just 60 left in existence, the critically endangered...

DOZENS of bird species – pelicans, galahs, and Major Mitchell cockatoos among them – circle the grass-lined waterhole, while brolgas step lightly through the dense scrub, and native...

In 1914, a prominent Geelong barrister and amateur ornithologist, Charles Belcher, self-published The Birds of the District of Geelong. In the book he eloquently describes his first sighting of Lake...

A soft rain is falling on the Daintree River at 6am as Chris Dahlberg steers the boat towards the bank and cuts the outboard motor. Since moving to the Daintree in 1989 he has been a pioneer of this...

When Thomas Madsen went to Fogg Dam in the Northern Territory last year he was in for a shock. The place known for having the world’s largest concentration of wildlife was, quite literally,...

With daylight nearly gone and a new tide covering all but a thin strip of Lee Point Beach, Arthur Keates suddenly becomes excited. Peering through his spotting scope, he’s just recorded a...

ECOLOGIST Alison Matthews always knew wombats could move quickly, but since she started tracking them for climate research, even she has been surprised at how elusive these seemingly awkward...

As the sun sets in the highlands of Tasmania, near Loongana, a man hacks into grisly, unrecognisable pieces of flesh and bone, distributing them across the verandahs of isolated log cabins like...

The edge of a massive dust cloud – apricot pink against the blue-grey sky of a late afternoon summer thunderstorm – is driven across the sparse Riverina plains by a blustering wind. Out...

Sixty years ago, a vast, inhospitable, infertile tract of land stretched west from the edge of the Wimmera in Victoria towards Adelaide. Known as the Ninety Mile Desert (or, more accurately as it...

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is more Jurassic Park than Mission Impossible. You’ll be teleported back to Australia the way it was 200,000 years ago in the Pleistocene Age....

Up in the gorge country on the western border of Bullo River Station, life goes on pretty much as it has for thousands of years. Red sandstone chasms cut across the surface of the earth, bracketing...

Early winter mornings at Mandalee Swamp are pale and beautiful; a dense fog overlays still waters. Heads beneath their wings, the ghostly one-legged silhouettes of roosting brolgas stand hunched in a...

On the north coast of Arnhem Land is an indigenous community called Maningrida. An hour’s drive from Maningrida is an outstation called Kolorbidahdah and a little way from there is a river...

Light aircraft crisscrossing Australia’s vast northern coastline carry some pretty unusual cargo at times, but none more so than the 65 northern quolls flown out of Darwin to an island haven...

The list of creatures that prey on turtles throughout their life cycle is almost a who’s who of the animal kingdom in this part of the world, including goannas and a variety of birds and fish....

At the gateway to South Australia’s outback between the Flinders and Gawler ranges, a stone’s-throw from the shimmering Stuart Highway out of Port Augusta, Australia’s natural...

If ever there was a case of having the right bloke in the right place it would be entomologist Dan Papacek and his Bugs for Bugs operation at Mundubbera, the centre of Queensland’s citrus-fruit...

“I swear it was the worst day of my entire life,” Simon Walton says emphatically, of the day he had to face putting down his ailing pet wombat, ‘Wallah’. Simon was 18 at the...

It’s never easy being the ‘new kid on the block’ – especially when you’re a conservationist moving into a neighbourhood of pastoralists. So what’s the best way to...

It’s easy to just drive past Monteagle Cemetery unaware of the treasures it holds. For most of the year, the cemetery, which is 15 kilometres north of Young, NSW, looks pretty much like any...

Are carp the curse of the Murray-Darling river system or innocent victims of a nasty smear campaign? Jim Barrett, of the Murray-Darling Basin Commission (MDBC), is not prepared to paint carp, an...

Glimmering yellow, the sun’s first rays pierce the canopy offered by the towering gum trees and gnarly ironbarks. Drops of dew prepare, slowly growing larger, until they finally lose their grip...