Kanyana Wildlife Rehabilitation Centre excursion, February 2012.
In welcoming the Young Naturalists and their families to Kanyana, June Butcher expressed her delight at seeing so many young nature enthusiasts attending: our group totalled over 40 people, about two thirds of them children. June praised the parents for encouraging these children’s interest in nature and conservation, and talked of importance of the work the our club is doing to assist in this.
About Kanyana
We were given a introductory presentation by Kanyana volunteer, Barbara Wright, who told us of how Kanyana began with June and Lloyd Butcher caring for sick and injured wildlife from their home in Gooseberry Hill. June established a small animal hospital in 1986, and from there Kanyana has moved and expanded to take on a 16 hectare site outside Lesmurdie, to become a state-of-the-art wildlife rehabilitation centre that has cared for over 150 species. Today Kanyana is nationally reknown for the role it plays in breeding Bilbies for release into the wild. It is a non-profit organisation relying solely on donations from individuals and corporate donors.
Bilbies
June then told the children of how she came to care for her first Bilby, Bet-bet, who arrived in 1996 as a very sick young animal. Bet-bet was to go on to produce 13 babies, making her contribution to the more than one hundred Bilbies bred at the Centre. We learned of the natural history of the Bilby, also known as the Greater Bilby or the Rabbit-eared Bandicoot, of how they have very specific habitat requirements, needing sand suitable for digging burrows up to a metre and a half deep, and of their omnivorous diet. We were all fascinated to discover the small “nail” found at the very tip of a Bilbies tail, and the lack of an accepted explanation for this. After this children and adults couldn’t wait to begin the nocturnal tour and see our first live Bilbies.
Nocturnal tour
We spilt into four smaller groups for our tour of the Centre, each guided by an experiencde and very informative volunteer guide. The tour included a visit to the hospital where we saw a recovering Singing Honeyeater chick and a Bobtail Skink suffering from Bobtail Flu, a disease it would almost certainly die from if left in the wild. We moved on to view the aviaries in which Magpies, Turtle-doves, and a Shining Bronze Cuckoo were being cared for.
Outside the hospital we bumped into a female echidna enjoying a nocturnal ant hunt. The children were all fascinated by this unusual creature, with backward-facing hind feet, and a snout capable of detecting minute electrical signals to aid it in its hunt for termites of which it consumes up to 20,000 each day!
We were all even more excited to see Bilbies busy digging and hoping around their enclosures. Most of our Young Naturalists declared at this point that they wanted to work as volunteers too, but were disappointed to find out they would have to wait until they are sixteen.
After the Bilbies we went on to see Woylies and learn about their passion for truffles, and some were lucky enough to stroke an incredibly cute Boodie (or Burrowing Bettong), an animal once widespread but now extinct on mainland Australia.
The children finished the evening looking at the reptiles, including a Stimson’s Python, a Western Bearded Dragon, and a Bobtail Skink, and following that, browsing the collection of nests, eggs, skulls and other things. I suspect Kanyana will be seeing more of the Young Nats in future.
Find out more
You can find out more about Bilbies from these websites
- Kanyana’s Bilby breeding program: http://www.kanyanawildlife.org.au
- The secret life of the bilby (ABC Science article): http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2006/04/06/2042654.htm
- Save the Bilby: http://www.savethebilbyfund.com
For books about Bilbies and other marsupials, check out your local library, most have a good selection. For younger children, there lots of great books about Bilbies, including these:
- Bilby secrets by Edel Wignell
- Macrotis, the Easter Bilby, by Pauline Reilly
You can find out about volunteering at Kanyana or making a donation to help them with their important work by visiting their website at www.kanyanawildlife.org.au.
And, Kanyana have some videos on YouTube, including a short film about a young puggle Echidna.