Royal Botanic Gardens Cranbourne - Eilish Roberts
Hosted by Ben Cullen
The Royal Botanic Gardens in Cranbourne are a wonderful place. Alongside the Australian Garden are around 350 hectares of remnant vegetation, with heathlands, wetlands and woodlands providing habitat for an incredible range of wildlife. If you’re lucky, you might even spot a Southern Brown Bandicoot.
For this episode, I walk through the gardens with Eilish Roberts, Southern Brown Bandicoot Outreach Officer at Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria.
Eilish cares deeply about bandicoots, and I think we’re incredibly lucky to have someone like her working with communities and helping current and future generations understand the importance of this endangered native mammal.
Southern Brown Bandicoots were once among the most common and widespread mammals around Melbourne. Today their populations are much more fragmented, which makes it all the more remarkable that we still have an endangered mammal living so close to our growing suburbs.
As we walk, Eilish explains what bandicoots need to thrive, how Cranbourne has become such an important stronghold for them, and what it will take for bandicoots to persist in Melbourne’s growing suburban landscape. We talk about habitat, connectivity, indigenous vegetation, community awareness and the simple changes that can make our suburbs more welcoming for wildlife.
We also discover just how important bandicoots are to the landscapes they live in. As ecosystem engineers, they turn over huge amounts of soil, spread fungi and seeds, and help create healthier conditions for plants and other wildlife.
For me, the bandicoots at Cranbourne are a great example of what conservation around Melbourne can look like, and what it will take to keep threatened species as part of our suburbs into the future.
https://www.rbg.vic.gov.au/cranbourne-gardens/
https://www.rbg.vic.gov.au/initiatives/southern-brown-bandicoot/
https://www.rbg.vic.gov.au/initiatives/virtual-garden/young-ones/