Ancient trees & super senses … ways to discover & save nature
Wollemi: Saving a Dinosaur Tree
written by Samantha Tidy & illustrated by Rachel Gyan
Reviewed by Bram (age 10)
This book, with colourful, happy illustrations, tells the amazing true story about the discovery of an ancient type of tree that has existed since the time of the dinosaurs. It also explains how many people including park rangers, botanists and even firefighters have worked together to make sure that it continues to survive.
The small gorge where they grow in the Wollemi National Park has been kept top secret to protect the trees and only a few people know about it (although this book makes me want to find it too!). To make sure the pine survives, botanists started growing baby plants in other places around the world and after reading this book, I was inspired to go to the Royal Botanic Gardens in Sydney to see a Wollemi Pine for myself.
If you like science and nature, I highly recommend this book for readers 4–8 years old. The book is also good because it has lots of inclusive characters.
Did you know?
Thanks to the efforts of conservationists, you can now grow your own Wollemi pine from a seedling too!
Ice age gum tree
The Mongarlowe Mallee or “ice age gum” is Australia’s rarest Eucalypt — much rarer than the Wollemi Pine. There are only six known trees spread across two southern NSW locations. One of them is believed to be 3,000 years old!
Learn about efforts to save this species from natural extinction
Did you know?
“Foley artists” custom make sounds for film and television soundtracks including nature documentaries. Their work will sometimes be used where live recording of plant or animal noises is not possible because of things like background noise or the need to film from far away.
Watch foley artists at work and learn more about the impact on nature conservation
Four-pawed sniffer guardians of the environment!
Domesticated animals such as cats and dogs can have devastating effects on native plants, animals and ecosystems… but that’s not always the case. Conservation dogs, for example, are doing some amazing work helping nature all over the world. “Guardian” dogs in Australia are used to protect vulnerable species from predators and “detection” dogs can be used to do things like sniff out rare and endangered species, such as frogs and koalas, as well as find plant pests.
Find out more about the amazing powers of conservation dogs
Sound tech and science
A20 Search is a new audio search engine database that uses millions of hours of wildlife audio collected by the Australian Acoustics Observatory (A2O).
Using Google AI from machine learning and automatic audio recognition, users can upload audio recordings of an animal species and find similar sounds across the database. This will help make “bioacoustics” research both easier.
Find out more and try a short quiz
What is “bioacoustics”?
Scientists listening to plants and animal sounds to understand how they are made and received, and to assess ecosystem health.
(Kind of) Good news …
As of 1 January 2024 native timber harvesting in WA and Victoria state forests is illegal.
But … in NSW it is still legal and in December 2023 Forestry Corporation NSW was fined after being found guilty of illegally felling hollow-bearing trees in a part of Mogo State Forest.