Qualla: Heirisson Prong

Heirisson Prong: Introduction

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

A fence is a strange thing to call a conservation triumph. Yet on Heirisson Prong, a thin spit of red earth jutting north into Shark Bay, a single wire-and-mesh line strung across the narrowest neck of the peninsula in 1990 became one of the boldest experiments in Australian wildlife history. The idea was simple and audacious at once: seal off the tip of this finger of land, drive out the foxes and feral cats that had hollowed out the continent's small mammals, and bring back the animals that European settlement had erased. For a while, against the odds, it worked.

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Heirisson Prong: The Quiet Catastrophe

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Australia has lost more mammal species than any other continent, and for a long time nobody agreed on why. When the Heirisson Prong project began in 1989, many scientists still doubted that introduced predators were the cause. Surely habitat loss or disease explained the vanishin...

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Heirisson Prong: A Town Builds an Ark

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The project was not born in a university lab but in Useless Loop, the tiny salt-mining settlement at the base of the peninsula. The Useless Loop Community Biosphere Project Group organized it, modeling the reserve on UNESCO's biosphere concept: a protected core for nature, ringed...

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Heirisson Prong: The Animals Return

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In 1992 the first burrowing bettongs, small kangaroo cousins that dig warren-like burrows, were carried over from Dorre Island and released into the predator-free zone. Twelve animals became twenty-three within a year. Western barred bandicoots followed from Dorre Island in 1995,...

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Heirisson Prong: The Leak

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

No fence is perfect, and this one had a weakness it could never overcome. On the eastern side, a tidal flat more than a kilometer wide made the barrier nearly impossible to seal. Foxes and cats found their way through. When foxes were poisoned in the buffer zone, the cats multipl...

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Heirisson Prong: What the Fence Proved

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Heirisson Prong did not end in permanent victory, but its legacy outlasted its wire. The project helped settle the scientific argument once and for all: introduced predators, not just lost habitat, had driven Australia's mammal collapse. That lesson now underpins predator-proof s...

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