Welcome to the summer edition of Nature Matters, and our final for the year. We are excited to share our latest updates with you.

This edition features updates from across our nature reserve network, including our latest nature reserve acquisition, Pooginook West, in the Riverland region of South Australia. It also includes updates from our team, recent events and more.

We are seeking your support to kickstart the restoration of Pooginook West, through our Forever Nature Fund Summer Appeal.

Nature Foundation is delighted to announce the acquisition and establishment of its tenth nature reserve, Pooginook West Nature Reserve. This 2,396-hectare reserve is on the traditional lands of the Ngawait people, about 25 kilometres northeast of Waikerie.

Crucially, Pooginook West sits beside Pooginook Conservation Park to significantly increase the connectivity and amount of protected land available for local species. The site will also provide a southward migration pathway for key arid-zone species seeking cooler conditions as the climate changes. 

On 5 December 2025 (International Volunteer Day), Nature Foundation staff, Board Chair Jan Ferguson OAM, Board Director Bec Hardy, and volunteers gathered at Belair National Park to celebrate their efforts at our annual Volunteer Thank You BBQ.

This event also provided an opportunity to acknowledge and recognise the efforts of those volunteers who logged the most hours across the 2025 season, participating in a wide range of working bees, activities and office-based support, impacting multiple nature reserves.

The Nature Foundation volunteers who registered the most hours of service in 2025 were:

The Reserve Management team and Nature Foundation volunteers recently held the inaugural working bee at Mongolurring Nature Reserve in September 2025. Located east of Mount Bryan in South Australia’s midnorth, this 1,200-hectare area of mallee woodland was generously donated to Nature Foundation by a benefactor in June 2024. 

Volunteers Sonia and Tim Croft undertook an initial vegetation assessment in October 2024, which, in addition to assessing vegetation types and habitats across the western side of the reserve, identified evidence of invasive weeds, including African Boxthorn (Lycium ferocissum) and a localised patch of Horehound (Marrubium vulgare). Further assessment found African Boxthorn widespread across the nature reserve, with mature, dense patches dominating some areas.

Since 2022, 920 Iron-grass plants have been planted across Tiliqua Nature Reserve, a key step in restoring this Critically Endangered ecological community, located near Burra in South Australia’s mid north.

Approximately 680 Iron-grass (Lomandra multiflora ssp. Dura, Lomandra densiflora, and Lomandra effusa) plants, planted at the start of the restoration project, were contained within planting exclosures constructed to protect these highly palatable young plants from grazing by sheep and kangaroos. Three years on, these exclosures can be removed, allowing grazing between the establishing plants and assisting habitat management for the Endangered Pygmy Bluetongue Lizard (Tiliqua adelaidensis) and the Critically Endangered Pale Sun-moth (Synemon selene) that call the nature reserve home.