We did it! Thanks to your incredible support, we've reached our $2.6 million fundraising goal to purchase and protect Nil Desperandum. But our journey isn’t over – we still need your help. Every additional dollar raised will empower us to enhance the management of this breathtaking landscape, ensuring its beauty and vitality for generations to come. 

Nil Desperandum holds immense ecological value. This land is crucial for protecting a nationally important wetland. Regular flooding here creates a vital breeding ground for waterbirds, and reducing grazing pressure would restore native vegetation, creating safe habitats for small species like dunnarts and planigales.

Nil Desperandum is a 4,037-hectare property with a name that fittingly means ‘nothing to be despaired of’. It increases the connectivity between our Naree Station Reserve and South Endeavour Trust’s Yantabulla Station.

Your donation can help us:

  • Remove cattle to restore native groundcover.
  • Create a safe haven where endangered species will thrive.
  • Extend conservation programs from neighbouring reserves.

Thank you for your support, your donation will not only enable work on Nil Desperandum, it will also go directly to our critical conservation work right around Australia – improving wildlife habitat, protecting endangered species, and scientific research that is crucial to protect nature into the future. It’s critical we do what we can to care for nature, because nature cares for us. 

Bridget Roberts

Bridget Roberts
Bush Heritage Ecologist
Paroo Warrego

Expanding our protection

Expanding the land we protect in these wetlands is an efficient way to deploy our resources. 

With skilled land managers already established at Naree Station, and also managing the adjacent Yantabulla Station, owned by the South Endeavour Trust, we can get started quickly to establish a conservation reserve.

Importantly, adding this extra piece of the puzzle would allow us to manage both sides of the Cuttaburra Creek, ensuring stronger protection for this vital water channel.

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Map of Nil Desperandum, Naree and Yantabulla Swamp.
“All it takes is one big flood for the place to come alive. Fish start feeding... All of the lignum and the big coolabahs and yapunyas turn green and start flowering. The insects go crazy and it brings in birds from all around.”

— Bridget Roberts (Ecologist)

Photo by Annette Ruzicka

Brolgas. Photo Darcy Whittaker.

Brolgas. Photo by Darcy Whittaker.

Boom and bust

Iconic waterbirds such as egrets, ibis, brolgas, pied stilts and spoonbills rely on flooding in inland river systems to support breeding colonies. This wetland is part of the last free-flowing rivers in the Murray-Darling Basin, their waters still flowing when rain arrives. Elsewhere our waterways and their wetlands struggle.

While often dry, when water does come, the landscape is ready to transform. Burrowing frogs, crustaceans and shrimp lie waiting below the surface, plants and algae turn the landscape a vivid green and with plenty to feed on waterbirds are attracted in large numbers.

The biggest threat to our waterbirds is loss of habitat, particularly through drying rivers and wetlands. Don't let that happen here.

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About Bush Heritage

Bush Heritage Australia is a leading not-for-profit conservation organisation protecting ecosystems and wildlife across the continent.

We’re grounded in science and culture to protect and heal Country forever. We’re on the ground, working with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and the agricultural sector to deliver landscape-scale impact.

Together, we're nurturing Australia's natural heritage for generations to come.

Be part of this change

Photo by Annette Ruzicka.

Photo by Annette Ruzicka.

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Where water flows, biodiversity grows.

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Galahs. Photo by Annette Ruzicka

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