Blending Banksia woodland and constructed wetlands in a rehabilitated quarry site.

The Swan Coastal plain stretches for over 600km along the west coast of Western Australia. It's Mediterranean climate has proved attractive to the majority of residents of the state, resulting in extensive clearing of original vegetation and the drainage or filling of most wetlands. Climate change is placing an additional layer of uncertainty over the future of remaining natural vegetation, with reduced rainfall and a lowering of water tables causing extensive loss of Banksia woodland and the complete or hastened drying out of ephemeral wetlands. The project proposal is to:

* revegetate much of the former quarry site with Banksia woodland vegetation in the knowledge that quarrying has reduced the thickness of sand between the new land surface and the climate-change-induced lower water tableand

* create new wetlands that will add to the biodiversity of the post-quarrying minesite and replace some of the natural wetlands lost over the last 200 years of urban development on the Swan Coastal Plain.

The creation of new habitat complexes that previously did not occur on the quarry site will theoretically allow the introduction of some wildlife species that either are now endangered on the Swan Coastal Plain such as the mainland quokka or which have suffered major range reductions through wetland loss and/or climate change such as many species of waterbirds.