Dear NRPG Members and Interested.

Here’s an update on Wilsons Inlet Catchment Commitee down around Denmark way.

Best Wishes

Clive

Welcome to our Birak 2026 newsletter.  With staff leave, building a new website and newsletter platform this edition is running a bit late.  Fortunately Noongar seasons are more fluid than the rigid Gregorian system.  As usual, WICC is flat out delivering science driven projects supported by an awesome volunteer base.  I am pleased to announce that Stephen Frost has taken on the Chairperson role at WICC.  Stephen is an icon amongst the biological farming community.  A huge thank you to our outgoing Chairperson, Greg Sounness.  Enjoy.

Shaun Ossinger

EO, WICC

In this edition:

• We welcome new chair Stephen Frost
• Dung beetle monitoring update
• Meeting growing vegetation demands
• Habitat Boxes
• New program – The Ripple Effect
• Inlet and rainfall update

Farmers in focus

Narrikup farmers Stephen and Kerry Frost have been operating Stonemeal Farm since the early 1980s, with a focus on soil biology, mineralisation, and minimising chemical inputs. With a philosophy of farming the rhizosphere, the Frosts have demonstrated that biological farming can achieve excellent yields while improving drought tolerance. Their work earned them the Australian Government’s Excellence in Sustainable Farm Practices Award (Western Australian winner and national finalist). Stephen chaired WICC many moons ago, and in 2025 the WICC Board once again tapped Stephen to take the helm. Learn a bit more about Stephen’s farming philosophy — and why we asked him to step back into the role.

WICC: When it comes to sustainable agriculture, you often mention the “triple bottom line.” Can you explain what this is?

Stephen: It’s a principle we apply in farming and in general business. The triple bottom line considers environmental, social, and economic outcomes in decision-making — in no particular order, but with each carrying equal weight. In all our agricultural pursuits, production alongside conservation has resulted in the best financial outcomes and certainly the most satisfying ones.

The social principle reflects our responsibility to produce high-quality, healthy food, particularly with minimal chemical contaminants and to do so in an ethical and sustainable way.

WICC: One of your first moves at Stonemeal, before subsidies came along, was fencing off your remnant vegetation. Why did you do this, and what have you noticed as a result?

Stephen: We wanted to protect the health of the remnant vegetation on the farm, and excluding stock was the most obvious first step. Most of this fencing was completed during the 1990s and early 2000s.

Today, around 25% of the farm remains as remnant vegetation, which still shows strong diversity and overall ecosystem health. Many people don’t realise that maintaining healthy remnant vegetation on farms provides numerous benefits, including habitat for predatory insects and birds that help manage insect pests, as well as providing excellent shelter for stock and crops.

I’m hopeful that in the future, carbon incentives will be extended to farmers who protect and enhance remnant vegetation on their properties.

WICC: You were involved with WICC in its early days. What changes have you noticed since we first started in the 1990s?

Stephen: In the early days of both the Hay River Land Conservation District Committee and later WICC, there were far fewer funding opportunities than exist today. However, those organisations played a vital role in bringing like-minded people together and promoting conservation within the community, which significantly improved awareness.

Funding has always been the main challenge — particularly to support landholders with advice and, more importantly, to enable on-ground conservation work. Today, both the community and governments better understand that conservation is a necessity, not just a “nice thing to do.”

With financial support now coming from multiple avenues, WICC has demonstrated — through philanthropy, grants, and visible, tangible projects — how organisations can open new doors. A diverse funding base puts organisations like WICC in a strong position to self-fund conservation work and secure a sustainable future.

WICC: Where do you hope to see WICC in five years?

Stephen: With such talented staff under Shaun and a very diverse and experienced Board, I see WICC continuing to strengthen its standing in the local philanthropic and conservation charity space. I’d like to see the organisation running strong, self-funded projects that place WICC in a position to support and fund other conservation initiatives across the region.

Beetle update

Oyster Harbour Catchment Group’s Lorna Macdonald with an impressive pile of beetles        (mainly Onthophagus taurus) trapped at her Wilyung monitoring site.

We have now finished our current program of monthly dung beetle monitoring with the beetles keeping us guessing right to the end! 40 traps were set monthly across the Southwest and Great Southern regions (5 trapping sites in WICC’s area of operation). The dung beetle traps were set for 24 hours in the first week of each month. The beetles were attracted by a fresh dung bait, then fall into a bucket to be counted & released safely back to the paddock on the day of collection. We were pleasantly surprised early on to find some monitoring sites already boasting thousands of early-summer-active dung beetles as early as the first week of October. From then on, beetles continued to build in numbers, generally increasing month by month (except in December), with a lot of variation among the 5 local sites to keep us wondering what each month’s trapping would have in store!

The impressive summer beetle Onitis aygulus was found at Smith and Sounness monitoring     sites. This could be a contender for future translocation to coastal beetle-friendly farms      further south.

Total dung beetle numbers at WICC trapping sites (Sep 2025 – Feb 2026).

We thought we’d reached the peak of dung beetle activity in early January, with a massive total of 30,590 beetles across all 5 sites. But then February came along and the beetles rallied to a strong finish – 37,143 beetles were trapped overnight in the first week of February. Sites along the south coast were especially abundant in February, with over 14,000 beetles in the traps at Fiona Marshall’s site in Torbay – the highest overall total for the 6 months of monitoring.  A huge thank you to Kylie’s mum Pauline Cook who stepped up to volunteer for beetle counting duties in December, January and February. Without her help, Kylie would probably still be counting beetles!  MonthMost beetles (total)2nd place (total)3rd place (total)SeptemberFiona Marshall (41)Trevlyn Smith (34)Denmark Ag College (28)OctoberBenita Cattalini (2910)Trevlyn Smith (1195)Greg Sounness (380)NovemberGreg Sounness (1297)Denmark Ag College (794)Trevlyn Smith (719)DecemberTrevlyn Smith (581)Benita Cattalini (506)Greg Sounness (479)JanuaryGreg Sounness (13,736)Trevlyn Smith (5,970)Fiona Marshall (4788)FebruaryFiona Marshall (14,057)Benita Cattalini (9,634)Trevlyn Smith (6387)

Thanks to all our beetle-friendly farmers who let us visit each month & count their beetles. What’s next in the world of dung beetles?We are now busy analysing the monitoring data from all sites so we can make recommendations to DPIRD on the best way forward in boosting dung beetle numbers at times and places where they are scarce. We will also be running more dung beetle workshops this year, to share the results of our monitoring program and continue our campaign for more beetle species that are active in spring and autumn. To find out how to help dung beetles thrive on your farm, check out the dung beetle farm management guide here: https://wicc.org.au/dung-beetle-management-guide/

Meeting growing vegetation demands

This winter, more than 30,000 seedlings are set to be planted across our catchment as part of our expanding revegetation programs. Over 20 landholders are partnering with us this season, through a number of different projects, contributing to a wide range of restoration efforts across our region.From little half metre shrubs to 40 metre towering trees, the diversity in our order this year has approx. 57 species currently being carefully grown to support these wonderful initiatives. From a variety of Banksias, Hakeas, Melaleucas, Eucalyptus, Kunzea, Taxandria’s, Bossiaea, Acacias, sedges and grasses, our excitement grows as we watch them flourish to be ready for the upcoming planting season.These new plantings will be used along our waterways to assist in filtering nutrient runoff from nearby farming paddocks, stabilise the banks and soil with healthy vegetation and roots to minimise erosion, as well as suppress and provide natural weed control. This all helps to improve water quality and create a more balanced ecosystem in and around our waterways, as well as provide vital habitat, shade and necessary resources for native fauna. A portion of these seedlings will also support our Community for Cockies program, helping to provide long‑term foraging habitat for our iconic black cockatoos well into the future. As part of this initiative, students across Denmark and Mt Barker will be able to take home specially selected plants to grow on their own properties. This will be a fitting finale to the program after all their hard work in building cockatoo nesting boxes and establishing beautiful food gardens with fencing and signage to create a wonderful legacy for our beloved cockatoos.If you’re interested in getting involved or just seeing what we are all about, visit www.wicc.org.au to explore our programs.

Habitat Box

The uptake of habitat boxes across the WICC catchment by black cockatoos over the past year has been relatively low. Oddly, this is a good sign and reflects several local factors. Much of our patch  still contains extensive forest with centuries-old trees that naturally provide large hollows suitable for cockatoo breeding. As a result, many local species are not under the same pressure to occupy artificial hollows as their counterparts in the central, northern, and eastern wheatbelt, where habitat loss has been more severe and nest boxes are often taken up very quickly.It is also still early days for the program. With appropriate maintenance, these habitat boxes are expected to remain functional for a decade or more, and the first year can be considered a settling-in period as wildlife gradually discovers and assesses them.

As shown in the graph above, the species most frequently using the boxes to date has been the Australian wood duck. Encouragingly, one box hosted a family of boobook owls, while several others were occupied by brush tailed possums, including a mother with a juvenile. Very few feral species were recorded, and inspections following several winter storms found the boxes to be in very good condition.As  ornithologist Dr Simon Cherriman often reminded students during his school talks, these are “habitat boxes”, not “cockatoo boxes”. While they are designed with cockatoos in mind, a wide range of species may ultimately make use of them—and it is native wildlife we hope will continue to do so over time.

New program – The Ripple Effect

Pondi sensors have been deployed for 2-4 weeks on neighbouring pairs of dams, to measure greenhouse gas emissions before and after livestock exclusion.

WICC’s new program to improve water quality, carbon storage and biodiversity in & around farm dams is up and running with the first farmer completing their fence to exclude cattle in December, and our first round of water quality monitoring completed in January. Water quality monitoring included lab-based analysis of a range of micro-and macro-nutrients, assessment of levels of harmful bacteria like E. coli and fecal coliforms, and on-site measurement of key physical properties like pH, salinity and turbidity. The project will track 8 dams in Mt Barker, Albany and Torbay regions to see the effects of excluding livestock on water quality. We will continue monitoring the dams until the end of 2027. This science-based approach will strengthen future funding applications, as investment partners consistently support projects grounded in high-quality data that deliver measurable outcomes. Ultimately this project is creating a pathway to secure larger funding streams that support more growers to fence their dams, enhance farm resilience and biodiversity play a practical role in tackling climate change.  We are also teaming up with our neighbours at Oyster Harbour & Torbay Catchment Groups for an action-packed bus tours of healthy dams in our local area – scheduled for 16th March and the 7th May. RSVP here for the March event: https://www.trybooking.com/DJNPU, [email protected] for the May event. The Ripple Effect program will provide robust, local evidence on the real-world benefits of fencing and revegetating farm dams.  To find out more about the Ripple Effect, click here for project followers update.

Farmer Greg waits in the background for WICC’s Sus Ag Officer Kylie Cook to fall off her tiny kayak while deploying the Pondi sensors (Shaun made her wear a lifejacket)!!

Rainfall update

We have had another dry November / December.  Farmers were fortunate to get some late rains at the right time in September / October allowing them to grow better hay and silage compared to 2023’s shocker.  Looking ahead the Bureau is predicting around a 60-70% chance of above median rainfall for February and March and a return to median in April with our main climate drivers trending towards neutral.  Mind you they also predicted above median rainfall for November and December and the graphs below tell you how that turned out.

Click HERE for the Inlet height at the old railway bridge

What’s on…

Join us at an Accu-Spread demonstration day to find out. Let us know if you’d like your spreader tested for free (limited numbers!) Otherwise, come along and learn how to get the most out of your fertiliser spreading.

RSVP HERE

DONATE View email in browser Wilson Inlet Catchment Committee · U 3/15 Strickland St · Denmark, WA 6333 · Australia update your preferences or unsubscribe