NT stockman rents out his paradise to conservationists to save wildlife
Natasha Robinson; 11/10/08
Stockman Frank Shadforth knows every inch of stringybark woodland and tropical rainforest that thrives at his pastoral station lining the southern Gulf of Carpentaria. But some of the rare animals and birds that were once found in the station’s forests now live only in his memory. “A lot of things are disappearing very fast,” Mr Shadforth says. “There is a bird I used to see in this country when I was small - a woodpecker. In the 1970s, it disappeared. Same with another little kangaroo. It’s always in the back of my mind.” Now the pioneering stockman - whose father was the first Aboriginal stockman to purchase a long-term lease over pastoral land in 1953 - has entered into a historic deal with private conservationists. The Australian Wildlife Conservancy, a non-profit organisation, has just clinched a deal to sub-lease more than 100,000ha of Mr Shadforth’s Seven Emu Station, 850km southeast of Darwin near the Queensland border.
See; http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24478305-5013172,00.html
Tags: Aboriginal, Australia, Environment