The recent bushfire in Deep Creek on South Australia’s Fleurieu Peninsula has burned over 4,500 hectares, including critical wildlife habitat. Around 40% of Deep Creek National Park and nearly all of Talisker Conservation Park were affected.

Most Australian ecosystems have adapted to fire and can recover over time. But in areas with fragmented habitats, a single fire can put species at risk of local extinction, especially if other threats are not managed.

The Wildlife Recovery Fund – a Nature Foundation and state government initiative – has been opened to help fund projects that promote recovery and increase resilience of vital habitats damaged or destroyed by fire.

2023 Mike Bull Award winner, Dr Stephen Zozaya, is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Australian National University (ANU) and joined webinar host, Dr Lucy Clive, to share his career researching reptiles.

Stephen's research has mainly focused on pheromones (chemical signals) and their influence on mate choice in Australian lizards. However, the Mike Bull Award funding has supported a new research direction, with a stronger conservation focus, including the discovery of several new species and populations of slider skinks (Lerista). Many of these species are threatened, but their conservation status cannot be updated until there is sufficient data to support listing as Endangered or Critically Endangered.

Nature Foundation Field Ecologist, Dr Hugh McGregor, has joined other experts in the field on a paper refuting a recent article (Wallach and Lundgren 2025) which concluded that there was no compelling evidence that two introduced predators (domestic cats and red foxes) were primary causes of mammal losses in Australia.

The authors find substantial flaws in its premises, analyses, data, interpretations, and conclusions, and using multiple lines of evidence, show that these two predators are strongly implicated in most Australian mammal extinctions and in the ongoing imperilment of numerous extant species.

We are delighted to introduce Hannah Edwards, Volunteer and Visitor Engagement Coordinator at Nature Foundation. Hannah is responsible for managing our Volunteer Program, from recruitment and induction to onsite coordination of volunteer activities in the field, and more. She also supports visitation to our nature reserves, enabling people to witness these very special landscapes and their conservation actions and results firsthand.

Learn more about Hannah here…

The millennium drought, 2022 floods and additional factors have led to an imbalance within freshwater networks connected to the River Murray, with an increase in alien fish species, such as Redfin and Common Carp, resulting in negative impacts on native fish species, both from predation by the larger invasive fish and habitat destruction.

In the recent survey held in October 2025, alien fish species accounted for only 13.1% of the total catch, with 86.9% native fish, reflecting a significant improvement. Excitingly, this eighth survey also recorded a single Southern Pygmy Perch—the first observed since the 2020 survey—highlighting positive, ongoing recovery of the ecosystem.