Back from the Brink - The Podcast
by Natura Pacific
Back from the Brink is Queensland's first ever series that delves into conservation stories from the incredible biodiversity hot-spot we have on our doorstep. From hammerhead sharks to giant orchids, the series showcases our region's most threatened species, what is happening to them and the remarkable people working tirelessly to save them from extinction.
Episodes
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E24 - A Tiny Butterfly with a Big Story
After more than a year in the making, Back from the Brink series returnes with a powerful new episode, featuring one of Australia's rarest butterflies. Meet THE Bulloak Jewel, and discover the conservation story behind this tiny species. Episode 24 explores the unique relationship between the...
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E23 - Gums and roses
Episode 23 sees the Natura Pacific team exploring Queensland's Granite Belt; a unique landscape in the state's south. Here, ancient geology and rich biodiversity have resulted in some intriguing relationships between endemic plants and insects. One such relationship is that linking the Border...
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E22 - Between a rock and a dry place
Episode 22 heads into the remote dry, vine-thickets of South East Queensland to meet a remarkable reptile. With Australia's commitment to the 30 by 30 pledge (a worldwide initiative for governments to designate 30% of Earth's land and ocean area as protected areas by 2030), we look at what...
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E21 - The prisoner and the Plunkett
Episode 21 takes a look at an exciting project taking place across a series of South East Queensland correctional centers. Named the Connecting Communities Native Seed Project, Natura Pacific have helped create a green production-line that is buzzing away behind the scenes to help protect...
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E20 - Birds without borders
Episode 20 celebrates National Bird Week 2022 with a story of enduring passion for a rather cryptic little brown bird, or LBJ - little brown job, as they're lovingly known in the birding world! The Eastern Bristlebird is an incredibly rare bird in Queensland these days, found only in a tiny slice...
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E19 - From nest to ocean
Episode 19 celebrates National Threatened Species Day 2022; a day when Australians come together to remember extinct species, and put thought to curbing future biodiversity loss. We look at celebrating one of Australia's conservation success stories, the Nest to Ocean Program which sees thousands...
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E18 - A tree with no name
Episode 18 brings us the story of one of the Gold Coast's best-kept secrets. Hidden deep in the rainforest valleys of Ormeau and Kingsholme is a myterious giant that not many people know about. The Ormeau Bottle-tree is a monster of a plant, growing to 35m tall in the wild and bearing a similar...
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E17 - A bird beloved
Episode 17 looks at the amazing success citizen science can have when tailored towards the monitoring of threatened species. For the Glossy Black-cockatoo, the smallest of Australia's black-cockatoo species, one particular NGO has been working tirelessly to help understand and protect its…
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E16 - Burrowing from the brink
Episode 16 takes a trip through time as we recount the awe-inspiring conservation success story of the Northern Hairy-nosed Wombat. For conservation to be successful it requires a cross-disciplinary approach, drawing on the skills and abilities of society as a whole. This has been the strategy of...
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E15 - Our vanishing grandparents
Episode 15 submerses us in the cool waters of Queensland's southern rivers to meet a living fossil. The Australian Lungfish has survived as a relatively unchanged species for about 145 million years, which means it's not only out-lived the dinosaurs, but it also pre-dates many of them! This...
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E14 - Mysterious creatures of the night
Episode 14 zooms into the world of insects. Despite being often poorly-known and out-of-sight, the value of insects to society, and the environment globally, is immeasurable. Some species have, in recent years, been given a shred of limelight, allowing people to understand the amazing life-cycles...
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E13 - Jaws of survival
Episode 13 takes us on a journey into the ocean. Sharks are often feared creatures, but are all of the more than 1,000 species, deserving of such a bad rap? For the Scalloped Hammerhead and other species of hammerhead shark, dispelling myths and misinformation is vitally important if we are to...
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E12 - A tale of two vines
Episode 12 celebrates the week that saw World Wildlife Day take to the social media platforms. While the United Nations' focus this year was on the importance of global forests and forest wildlife, we too dive into a story of one of our own forest-dwellers here in South East Queensland. The...
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E11 - My shrinking home
Episode 11 looks at a subject very close to home. Koalas are one of those icons of Australia that are inextricably linked with our national identity. However, while we marvel at Koalas in captivity or in books, their wild populations are experiencing a massive decline. Will the notion of wild...
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E10 - Out of the frying-pan, into the fire
Episode 10 takes a look at the impacts the 2020 bush-fires had on our most secretive Aussie mammals. The Greater Gliders, now split into 3 new species (Petauroides volans, P. armillatus and P. minor) are obligate hollow-dwelling gliding marsupials closely related to possums but distinguished by a...
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E09 - The race against the rust
Episode 9 is about pandemics. A topical issue of 2020, disease pandemics have affected not just our human communities, but those of plants too. Belonging to the Myrtaceae plant family, the Angle-stemmed Myrtle (Gossia gonoclada) is thought to have always been a rare tree. But since 2010, the...
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E08 - If I go, you go
Episode 8 examines the concept of keystone species and why they are so important in keeping our ecosystems from collapsing. The Weeping Paperbark (Melaleuca irbyana) is one such keystone. It is a small tree that provides ecosystem services for a wide array of special birds, insects and plants, as...
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E07 - Pollinators put food on our table
Episode 7 celebrates Australian Pollinator Week (8 - 15 November 2020) focusing on the fascinating world of Stingless Bees and other native bees. The world over, bees are declining due to a range of impacts, but we learn from Dr Tim Heard, author of the Australian Native Bee Book, how we can do…
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E06 - A hollow for a home
Episode 6 takes a look at Australia's biggest owl with Dr Rob Clemens from Birdlife Australia. In the last few years the scientific understanding of these large yet secretive birds has increased dramatically, thanks to a regional project headed-up by Rob and his team. Learn more about what makes...
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E05 - Our flying forest care-takers
Episode 5 focuses on the continuing controversy around flying-foxes, as we meet with Dr Ali Sammel from Griffith University to understand why these ancient flying mammals are so important for our planet. While the Grey-headed Flying-fox is the most threatened of the three flying-foxes in our...
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E04 - The fungus and the frog
Episode 4 takes a look at the current pandemic of chytridiomycosis, or in short, chytrid, which is a fungal disease killing the world's frogs at an unprecedented rate. We meet with Dr Mariel Familiar-Lopez, a researcher at Griffith University, who studies tiny mountain-top frogs such as the Red…
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E03 - We can all help if we want to
Episode 3 looks at Dr Clare Morrison's work in the conservation of lowland frogs like the Cascade Tree-frog across South East Queensland. Life for frogs in our urban parks and gardens is not easy, but you'll be surprised at how easily we can all get involved in making a frog-friendly pond or frog...
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E02 - Being beautiful isn't always rosy
Episode 2 looks at Professor Catherine Pickering's tales of orchid hunters, orchid conservation and how the plight of our region's largest and arguably most beautiful native orchid, is something we can all learn from. While growing native plants is so important to help support biodiversity in our...
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E01 - A drying world
Episode 1 looks at Rosalinde Brinkman's story of platypus conservation, working for Watergum, a not-for-profit organisation that helps local communities engage in on-ground activities to restore and maintain protected natural environments. She manages the PlatypusWatch program which is a…
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About this show
Back from the Brink is Queensland's first ever series that delves into conservation stories from the incredible biodiversity hot-spot we have on our doorstep. From hammerhead sharks to giant orchids, the series showcases our region's most threatened species, what is happening to them and the remarkable people working tirelessly to save them from extinction.
Hosted by
Natura Pacific