Australia has a new national park focused on protecting local animals - nature

Dryandra Woodland National Park is located in Western Australia, 180 kilometers southeast of Perth. It is the first national park in the Wheatbelt area that is dominated by agriculture. In the past, the landscape here featured eucalyptus and other native plant and tree species, but since the 1890s they have been extensively removed to make way for agriculture. Driandra Woodland is a piece of nature as it once seemed. The fragmented national park consists of 17 pieces of forest with a total area of 28,000 hectares. That’s only seven percent of the original forest.

Many different species of native fauna live in that area, they are endangered due to the loss of their habitat and domestic cats and foxes. This relates, for example, to mammals such as the numbat, the common opossum, the black-tailed sable, the short-nosed pennecote, the short-tailed kangaroo, the brush-tailed kangaroo, the wallaby and birds such as the nightingale owl, the short-billed raven cockatoo, and the Australian. Curling, creeping donkeys and temperature birds. In total there are 24 species of mammals, 98 species of birds and 41 reptiles in the area. In addition, special trees and plants such as eucalyptus, casuarina, congan and beautiful wildflowers grow.

Foxes and domestic cats have been removed from the area and this has made a huge difference to the numbats in particular. In total, there are still about 800 to 1,000 in the wild. In Drayandra Woodland, the absence of cats and foxes has increased that number from just 5 in 2018 to 35 in 2020.

In Dryandra, you can also learn about the culture of the indigenous Nungar people who lived here about 400,000 years ago. For example, the remains of an ancient clay oven and rock paintings can be seen in the national park. This culture is central to the Orchre Trail hiking trail. There are many other hiking trails in the park which range from 1.5 to 12.5 kilometers in length. In the middle of Dryandra is the Barna Mia Nature Reserve where you can see the endangered animals in their own habitat. You can take part in a night walk where you can watch the nocturnal animals that live there up close.

You can spend the night in small chalets in the village of Lions Dryandra or at campgrounds Congelin and Gnaala Mia.

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