MAIN BRANCH JULY MEETING REPORT.  Our speaker was Renae Boyd, who is the Community Organiser with Partnership for the Outback. Renae has a BSc (Hons) in Conservation Biology from UWA and is currently completing a Masters in Environmental Management through Charles Darwin University. About twenty years ago, the West Australian ...

The WA Naturalists’ Club has been successful in an application to Lotterywest for a two-year fungal project ‘Improving local knowledge of Amanita mushrooms in Western Australia’. The total amount of the grant is $20 000, with $15 000 coming from Lotterywest and the remaining $5 000 from the WA Naturalists’ ...

Dr Laurton McGurk, Chemical Safety Officer at University of Western Australia and enthusiastic mycophile, took us on a rollicking romp around the UWA campus to look for mushrooms and other fungi. This was the subject of the Main Branch’s June talk. Her inspiration was the general, often voiced opinion that ...

Main Club The weekend trip started on Friday afternoon when we travelled from Sunset Beach in Geraldton to the Chapman Valley Regional Park. We walked the trail between the sandbank at the Chapman River estuary and the Chapman road bridge (near Sunset Beach) and saw an Osprey close-up, Little Pied ...

Main Club The long-awaited departure of Whale Watch Western Australia’s (WWWA) Blue Whale tour was heralded on Saturday morning by a brisk sea breeze but clear skies and the promise of good weather as we attempted to track down the sometimes elusive Blue Whale—the largest animal known to have ever ...

Main Club Our speaker was Professor Byron Lamont, an expert on the adaptations of Mediterranean floras, especially those in south-west Australia. His special interests within that field are the evolution of the Proteaceae or Banksia family and the role of fire in the evolution of plants. He studied Agricultural Science ...

Leighton films a Sea Lion Our speaker, Leighton De Barros, has 30 years’ experience in the television industry, as producer, director, writer and cinematographer. He has worked on a great many films broadcast on television, has won 15 industry awards and been nominated for Emmy awards four times. He is ...

MARCH: WOODLAND AND FOREST HEALTH Our speaker was Professor Giles Hardy, Professor in Forest Pathology at Murdoch University. His main research interests are the impact of diseases on the health and functioning of ecosystems, both natural and managed. Within this field he has focussed mainly on the biology and control ...

The Club led a 4WD excursion to the Helena and Aurora Range (HAR), Mt Manning and Die Hardy ranges between 19 September and 25 October 2017. Eleven club members in five cars met up at Southern Cross to travel in convoy to the HAR where we spent two-and-a-half days and ...

Grady Brand is the Senior Curator of the Kings Park and Botanic Garden. He spoke to us at the November meeting about the role that the park plays in promoting the conservation value of the Western Australian flora. Grady has worked for Kings Park for 39 years; he remembers the ...