Ten years of fighting against extinction brought to life on film

feel good Celebrating a decade of WA's Wheatbelt conservation on the silver screen In short: A wildlife documentary filmed in WA's Wheatbelt has featured at an international film festival. The film by the Australian Wildlife Conservancy (AWC) follows a decade-long project to rehabilitate 10 threatened species at a predator-free sanctuary. What's next: The AWC will introduce some of the species outside of the predator-free fence. Ten years of late-night stake-outs and helping threatened species thrive has been captured on film and exhibited on an international stage. Australian Wildlife Conservancy (AWC) photographer and videographer Brad Leue has recorded hundreds of hours of footage of native wildlife at the Mt Gibson Wildlife Sanctuary, 360 kilometres north-east of Perth in Western Australia. The resulting documentary, Back to the Bush, was selected to be part of the Wildlife Conservation Film Festival. The documentary captures the 10-year effort to bring 10 species back from the brink of extinction, by establishing a predator-free fence. Mr Leue said it was incredible to share Australia's biggest reintroduction project to a global audience. "From a storytelling perspective, it's pretty special in itself,"he said. Mr Leue said the burrowing animals were "ecosystem engineers" and transformed the landscape over the decade. "It looks a little bit like a minefield in the sense that there's just these pits and burrows everywhere," he said. "It's a taste of Australia before feral predators kind of started to be an issue for all our native wildlife. "The country just looks good, it just looks like it's thriving." Filming hazards Mr Leue said recording the often small, nocturnal animals proved challenging. He said he used unmanned video camera traps and went on night time stake-outs to try and capture the animals natural behaviours. "You do really have to be quite creative, almost thinking like the animal to work out how to get footage of some of these more cryptic species," Mr Leue said. "As somebody who's really into their wildlife and gets energised by seeing wildlife, Mt Gibson is paradise," he said. He said he received a 'few nice little bumps' from animals leaping out of their cages when released by the AWC. Loading...Mr Leue said woylies often have "springs for legs". "They'll just kind of launch one to two meters in the air off into the bush," he said. Work 'never stops' AWC senior wildlife ecologist Bryony Palmer, who was involved from the beginning of the reintroduction effort, said it was surreal to see its long-term impact. "When you're working on it day-to-day, you can sort of lose sight of the bigger picture a little bit," she said. "It's so rewarding to see these really tangible conservation benefits for all of these different species." Dr Palmer said the project was highly successful. "For those species, there's eight of the 10 present on the sanctuary," she said. "Most of them have populations that are really thriving now." Like Mr Leue, Dr Palmer said the surrounding landscape changed dramatically. "You see signs of them everywhere, all their little diggings and footprints and things," she said. "It's really a feeling of the the bush and the landscape going back to the way it should be." Dr Palmer said the next step was to try and establish some of the species outside of the predator-free boundary. "The work never stops," she said.