Volunteers join effort to restore bird habitat at Nature Foundation's Para Woodlands former farm north of Adelaide

A red-browed finch is among woodlands birds that were hoped to benefit from the restored habitat at the Nature Foundations's Para Woodlands reserve, north of Adelaide.
Image by Drago Moise, courtesy Nature Foundation

Para Woodlands reserve, a former farm at Barossa Goldfields north of Adelaide, given to South Australia’s Nature Foundation by Elizabeth Law-Smith and her husband David, was the focus of volunteers’ efforts to restore to a grassy woodland as habitat for fauna, especially declining woodland birds.

Groups involved in the efforts included Conservation Volunteers. Planting at Pare Woodland covered more that 200 hectares, with more than 118,000 native plants and 1,000 kilograms of native grass seed used for direct seeding. A mix of locally indigenous eucalypts, sheoaks, and other tree and shrub species were selected to restore functional open woodlands with a grassy understorey.

The property had existing remnant vegetation, including river red gum, peppermint box, South Australian blue gum, native grasses and herbs. Conservation effort at Para Woodlands Nature Reserve include maintaining remnant vegetation, controlled sheep grazing to help maintain native grass; collecting seeds from the seed orchard; revegetating local native species and eradicating weedy species, along with property maintenance and increasing knowledge for conservation management.

Land next to Para Woodlands was owned by the South Australian government’s environment and water department with the combined area totalling 500 hectares.

Providing habitat for woodland birds in South Australia is a challenging recovery effort. Adelaide’s Mount Lofty Ranges were cleared of all but 10% of their vegetation by European settlers and, even though South Australia was the first Australia state in the 1980s to introduce legislation to prevent further large-scale clearance, the damage was done.