Dr. John Wamsley, founder and Managing Director of Earth Sanctuaries Limited (ESL), the world’s first stock market listed conservation company, with a Red kangaroo at Warrawong, a sanctuary he created in the Adelaide hills . "Giving Australian wildlife a helping hand."
Australia has one of the worst conservation records in the world. More than half of the mammals listed as endangered in the world today are found only in Australia.
Already around 34 of the continent's unique species, around half of the global total, have become extinct since the arrival of white settlers a mere 200 years ago.
Today, this huge island is ranked second in the world rogues’ gallery for ongoing biodiversity loss.
Earth Sanctuaries Limited (ESL), founded in the early 1990s by Australian mathematics professor turned pioneering conservationist, Dr John Wamsley, was the world's first stock market listed company dedicated to saving some of the world's most endangered species. His controversial, radical, pragmatic approach revolutionised conservation in Australia.
His ambition was to dedicate 1% of Australia to wildlife sanctuaries by 2025 and, thereby, save 100 species from extinction.
It is hard to overestimate the debt that Australian wildlife and habitat conservation owes John Wamsley. At the time his uncompromising approach to the eradication of feral animals and other invasive species and the creation of feral-proof conservation areas earned him scorn and vilification. Thirty years ago he faced arrest, legal action and death threats for what today is regarded as conservation ‘best practice’.
Dr. John Wamsley, founder of ESL, wearing his notorious "cat hat" made from the skin of a feral cat. Wamsley considered feral cats and foxes to be some of the biggest threats to the survival of endangered Australian wildlife. Cats were probably first introduced onto the Australian mainland from ship wrecks in the 17th century. Current estimates suggest there may be several million feral cats responsible for killing 1.4 billion of its native animals every year.
"Feral eradicators", with dingo pup, patrol around 100km of ESL feral-proof fence looking for rabbits, cats, foxes, goats and dogs.
In 50°C heat workers construct feral-proof fencing to surround Scotia Sanctuary in New South Wales. Here old-growth mallee stretches to the horizon, perfect habitat for the 12 numbats that Wamsley initially introduced to NSW in 1999, having been extinct for almost a century. It can take 400 years for a mallee trunk to develop a hollow big enough for a numbat to live in. At the time it was thought that no more than 300 survived in the wild in dry forest in Western Australia's south western tip. The situation was so dire that in 1982 Sir David Attenborough predicted on television that they would be the next of the world's species to become extinct.
"Feral eradicators" drag a steel frame called a "dusting plate" along the fence line before painstakingly patrolling the perimeter of Scotia Sanctuary looking for fresh tracks of feral invaders in the virgin dust.
At Yookamurra Sanctuary in South Australia, a rare numbat (Myrmecobius fasciatus fasciatus, with radio collar) forages for termites amongst mallee trees in the early morning. They can eat 20,000 of these insects a day. This is the last surviving sub-species. There are probably less than 1,000 numbats living wild in the whole of Australia, half the number of Giant pandas living in China’s forests.
Having become extinct in the state around 100 years ago, Wamsley was the first to reintroduce numbats to South Australia in 1993, where there is now a ‘self-sustaining’ population at Yookamurra. ‘Numbat’ or ‘noombat’ is the Noongar aboriginal name for the species.
In November 1999, hundreds of visitors, wildlife experts, the world’s press, representatives of virtually every Australian national park and Aboriginal Elders were invited to ‘Numbat Day’, an historic day when Wamsley re-introduced a seed population of a dozen numbats to Scotia Sanctuary after they had been extinct in New South Wales for almost a century. “The Elders were in tears,” he recalls, “Saying, I had brought back their Dreamtime.” Today Scotia, owned and managed by the Australian Wildlife Conservancy, has more than 400, one of the largest protected population of numbats in Australia.
The size of a grey squirrel, numbats are unique. It is the only marsupial that does not have a pouch, is only active during the day and its closest relative was, in fact, the now-extinct thylacine or ‘Tasmanian tiger’.
ESL founder Dr John Wamsley releases 3 ‘critically endangered’ Bridled Nailtail wallabies (Onychogalea fraenata) into Scotia Sanctuary. At the time there were fewer of this wallaby left in the wild than Giant pandas.
A young Eastern quoll (Dasyurus viverrinus), one of Australia's few surviving indigenous carnivores. Once extinct on the Australian mainland, until recently this quoll was only found in the wilds of Tasmania. Warrawong Sanctuary, in the Adelaide hills, South Australia, pioneered captive breeding of this rare species and created a thriving population.
A rare and endangered Greater bilby or Rabbit-eared bandicoot (Macrotis lagotis), a desert dweller, the result of one of many successful ESL captive breeding programmes.
A rare Yellow-footed Rock-wallaby (Petrogale xanthopus) shakes off rain drops from a recent squall over Buckaringa Sanctuary. Regarded as one of Australia's most beautiful wallabies, the species is most commonly associated with the Flinders Ranges of South Australia. Now strictly protected, it was once hunted intensively for its distinctive pelt.
