Big Sky Country takes you deep into the bush to hear the sounds of hope.   Join conservation organisation Bush Heritage Australia to travel this vast country: from the eucalypt woodlands of Dja Dja Wurrung country in central Victoria, to the woodland forests and grassy plains of central Arnhem Land. Meet the people on ground who are experts in ecology, culture, conservation and country. Learn about seasons and ceremony, teeny tiny fish and phascogale sex, and the sounds a tree makes when it dies. Hear the untold wonders of this precious and sometimes precarious land. And take the time t ..read more

What does it take to restore a native woodland? A bucket, hammer, trowel, seedlings and a whole heap of people power. These ingredients are abundant at Scottsdale Reserve on Ngarigo and Ngunnawal Country in New South Wales where for over seven years, volunteers have been showing up week after week to help plant over 40,000 trees. While their efforts might seem small in a global context, what they prove is that where there’s a will, there’s a way. And where’s there’s people, there’s the power to change the world for better.   Conservation is a people issue; we’ve caused the problems and we ..read more

It might seem strange for an ecologist to spend time on pastoral lands, but that’s exactly what Imogen Semmler does. She ‘meanders’ across paddocks to measure the health of their ecosystems and quantify their biodiverse value.  With over 58% of Australia managed for agricultural production, Imogen’s work is part of a new ‘natural capital accounting’ initiative that recognises that if we are to feed and clothe our planet, while protecting it, then we need to be looking at innovative ways to boost ecosystem health across agricultural lands. Part of the solution? Putting biodiversity on the ..read more

In 2021, Wiradjuri Elder Uncle James Ingram and Bush Heritage’s Aboriginal Partnerships Manager and Yuin Walbunja woman, Vikki Parsley, walked across Tarcutta Hills Reserve in southern NSW in search of cultural artefacts. Immediately, they called for a cultural burn. The land was in need of controlled fire, and it presented an opportunity to get Wiradjuri people back out on Country.     This was to be the first cultural burn held on a Bush Heritage reserve in New South Wales, and the beginning of a significant conversation about how fire has and hasn't been used in the continent’s so ..read more

Join us in April 2023 for season two of Big Sky Country, bringing stories from the bush to wherever you get your podcasts. Join conservation organisation Bush Heritage Australia to travel the vast Australian continent: from the flanks of the Mighty Murrumbidgee River in New South Wales where over 40,000 trees have been planted in an effort to restore a native woodland, to the “Galapagos of the Kimberley” where some slimy snails and their genetic evolution have scientists extremely excited, and across to the ancestral lands of the Waanyi and Garawa people where Elders and rangers are ..read more

If every scent tells a story, the Australian Sandalwood Tree (Santalum Spicatum) must be a library; rich with ecological, cultural and economic history books.   But today, much of this history is at risk, with unsustainable harvesting, climate change and feral predators pushing the tree perilously close to extinction.   In this episode, we drive down the Gunbarrel Highway to the Birriliburu Indigenous Protected Area in WA's central deserts to find some of the oldest sandalwood trees in the world. Underneath their scrambling canopies, we ask: How are they going in the wild? What makes ..read more

When you think of the seasons, does Spring begin on the first day of September? Summer on the first of December? Or is it the Wet season on the first of November? The Dry season on the first of May?   Unlike Gregorian or Western Calendars, Aboriginal calendars are not based on structural time, but ecological time, and they are strongly embedded in place.   Different phases of plant and animal lifecycles, variations in animal behaviours, cloud formations and wind directions can indicate the right time to harvest different plants and foods, and the right time to burn different vegetati ..read more

When there's one single population of a species left in the world, what do you do? Do you let it go extinct? Or do you do everything you can to save it?   In central Queensland, a collective effort is bringing one teeny, tiny fish back from the brink of extinction: the Red-finned Blue-eye.  In this episode, we take you to its home, where water, deep in the mantle of the earth below, has travelled up to the surface of an arid, inland environment and given rise to what some scientists have called the 'most significant natural springs for global biodiversity in the Great Artesian Basin ..read more

Naree Station Reserve on Budjiti country in New South Wales might look dry on most days of the year, but when the water arrives, by rain or flood, the landscape comes alive. Dry soil transforms into wetlands full of frogs singing, waterbirds flocking and insects buzzing. They call it boom and bust country, out the back o' Bourke, and it is part of the last unregulated river system in the Murray Darling Basin.   Water has sustained people, plants and animals for millennia, but in recent decades, Budjiti people have seen water, and the species that depend on it, disappearing.  How much ..read more

Climb up the tree. Open the nest box. And look inside the lives of Red-tailed Phascogales.  These small arboreal marsupials - with their big ears, big eyes and fluffy red tails - are just as loveable as koalas and kangaroos, but with a few big differences. They can fit in the palm of your hand. They have death-inducing mating habits. And, while they were once widespread across the southern half of Australia, they are now mostly restricted to the wheatbelt region of Western Australia.   Over a decade ago, a small group of these phascogales were bundled up, driven 100 kilometers and tr ..read more