Bush Blitz

Uncovering our country’s biodiversity

Australia’s largest nature discovery program has worked alongside the Nyaliga people to survey a myriad of plants and animals in the vibrant region of East Kimberly.

Around three quarters of Australia’s biodiversity is still waiting to be discovered by science, which is why Bush Blitz has teamed up with Traditional Owners to organise expeditions and document plants and animals across Australia.

This innovative partnership combines the expertise of many of Australia’s top scientists from museums, universities, and other organisations across the country with the valuable knowledge of Indigenous communities.

Bush Blitz manager, Jo Harding, said it is amazing to think that so little is known about a region that is so old and ecologically important.

“Out here, it’s wonderful to have so many different people, including scientists, teachers, and Traditional Owners, all working together, sharing knowledge, and discovering the amazing things that this landscape holds,” she said.

In 2014, a Bush Blitz survey was conducted at Durack River and Karunjie Stations in the Kimberley, Western Australia. Not only did it record 419 species that had not previously been recorded for the properties, including 41 species that may be new to science, but also nine threatened species, four exotic species, and eight weed species.

“At Bush Blitz, we say if you don’t know what you’ve got, you can’t protect it,” Jo said.

According to Bush Blitz, of the hundreds of species of plants and animals recorded, some highlights included:

• Collecting many putative new plant taxa – in most parts of Australia, finding just one flowering plant taxa new to science is a rare event.
• Three lichen species were first records for Western Australia.
• New information about spadefoot toads that will be added to future field guides. The juvenile Northern Spadefoot possessed colouration very similar to its sandhill-dwelling desert relative, Desert Spadefoot, which is later covered by black pigment as it increases in size.
• An undescribed species of rainbowfish. Scientists are undertaking ongoing research to determine its relationship to populations of Exquisite Rainbowfish living in Kakadu in the Northern Territory.
• Three new species of goblin spider and a new species of pseudoscorpion.
• The first crevice weaver spider record for northern Australia.
• A new record of a butterfly in Western Australia – the first for ten years. The butterfly is the Chrome Awl, whose natural habitat is the monsoon vine thickets found in the top end of the Northern Territory and North Queensland. It had not previously been recorded from Western Australia, despite extensive surveys of the vine thickets in the Kimberley.
• The survey of true bugs documented 124 species. The richness of the collections was beyond expectation. Highlights included a potential new genus and new species of true bug belonging to the tribe Agriopocorini, and the collection of a true bug from the oriental Thaumastomiris genus was a new record for Australia.