The Budadee Rangers delivered the first project through the Pilbara Environmental Offsets Fund (PEOF) which saw the mapping and removal of invasive weeds at Tharra, also known as the Woodstock Abydos Protected Reserve.
The reserve covers 154,000 ha and is around 150 km south of Port Hedland, between the Roebourne plains in the north and the Chichester Range in the south. It is one of the most archeologically and culturally significant places in Western Australia.
In 2020, PEOF granted the Budadee Aboriginal Corporation $600,000 over three years to deliver a weed management program at Tharra to respond to the recent increase in the highly invasive weed species Calotropis procera along rivers at the reserve.
In 2022, the PEOF team spent time on Country with Elders and Budadee Rangers. We discussed ideas for the next round of projects at Tharra to improve vegetation and habitat for species like the northern quoll (Dasyurus hallucatus), Pilbara leaf-nosed bat (Rhinonicteris aurantia) and greater bilby (Macrotis lagotis).
The Budadee Aboriginal Rangers have now completed three years of the project, establishing and initiating a long-term weed control plan across Tharra. The rangers undertook five weed control trips throughout 2023, with the expectation that Calotropis procera will be managed across 1,000 ha of Tharra. To date more than 5,200 instances of Calotropis procera, across 450 kilometres of riparian systems have been controlled.
Budadee Rangers have now delivered their third year of weed control activities and monitoring at Tharra and are in the process of designing the next phase of their project
Read more about the Pilbara Environmental Offsets Fund and other projects being delivered through the fund.
