Raakajilm wetland
We are excited to announce … there’s a wetland on Raakajilm!
This beautiful one hectare area will be seasonally wet, with a smaller permanent pool forming a drought refuge for wildlife. A wetland like this offers many opportunities to establish insurance populations of rare plants and a completely different bird-watching experience.
Rare plants and butterflies
We filled the wetland in March 2025, then planted it with an incredible assortment of wetland plants. There were some real rarities in the mix like the nationally threatened Stiff Groundsel (Senecio behrianus), Long Eryngium (Eryngium paludosum), and Darling Lily (Crinum flaccidum). These will be insurance populations, safe on Raakajilm from overgrazing.
But it’s also a wetland for rare butterflies. We hope to attract the Spotted Grass Blue (Zizeeria karsandra) and the Chequered Swallowtail (Papilio demoleus sthenelus) by careful planting of their food plants. That’s Carpet Weed - Glinus lotoides for the former and Hoary Scurf-pea Cullen cinereum for the latter. These butterflies will be friends for our super-rare Mallee Bronze Azure butterfly (Ogyris subterrestris).
Maybe the Painted Snipe that visited us in 2022 will return?
Birds, bats, frogs (and fish?)
We’ve been pleased with the wetland visitors so far, particularly the bats who were busy gleaning insects through March and April. Come spring we will be setting up some audio recorders to monitor bird, bat and frog calls.
And wouldn’t it be nice to also look after a population of tiny, native fish like Purple-spotted Gudgeon, safe in our Carp-free wetland.
Friends make it happen
Wetlands are a new thing for me, so I called out for some help. We are so grateful to:
Jesse Chaplin Burch Trust - for supporting the wetland vision. As always, we could not have done this without you.
Murray Darling Wetlands Working Group - for providing the environmental water and endless, no fuss positivity.
Wetland Revival Trust - for developing the wetland management plan, preparing the planting list, sourcing and planting the plants and guiding us every step of the way.
Sheridan Stephens, Frances Cincotta, Judy Allen and the WRT team for propagating our amazing plants. And to all the volunteers who helped plant them. Truly, planting wetlands is So. Much. Fun.
Nature Glenelg Trust - for some awesome elevation modelling that showed us where and how much water was needed.