Community science

Bringing back the southern pygmy perch

You may recall (some months back), that I published a research paper describing the successful reintroduction of a threatened freshwater fish, the southern pygmy perch, into wetlands around Bendigo, Victoria. This work has been extremely rewarding for a lot of reasons: not just for the positive conservation outcomes for a threatened (and underappreciated!) species but also for the incredible community engagement it involved. Without the help of local volunteers, restoration efforts of this scale would not be possible and it’s been amazing to see how the community has responded. I really don’t think I can underestimate how invigorating it is to see the general public commit to direct conservation action and to be able to see the outcomes of their efforts over a few years.

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Communities and conservation

When I was younger, I used to love visiting our local creek: it was a beautiful spot of nature a short walk from home. On a couple occasions, my Dad took me to the creek to catch yabbies – for a suburban kid, it was one of the few times I actually held and interacted with wild biodiversity, and helped foster my love for conservation and inquiry into biology. In the late 2000s to early 2010s, a likely combination of local pollution and extensive drought extirpated the yabbies from the creek – I would never see one in that creek again. I was devastated for the local loss of a fascinating creature, and the connection to nature it represented, but felt powerless to remedy the situation. To my knowledge, there are still no yabbies in that creek.

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