Latest news with #Nullarbor
ABC News
4 days ago
- General
- ABC News
Burial of WA Mirning ancestors after more than 100 years shines light on violent history
Shilloh Peel can "feel in her bones" when she is home. WARNING: This article contains references to Indigenous people who have died and describes violence of a graphic nature. Even as a child, driving south-east from Kalgoorlie with her aunties, the first breath of sea breeze rising off the Nullarbor Plain always seemed like a greeting. "You could hear it, feel it, and see it," she says. The Mirning woman, who represents the Apical Dick Stott family line from Western Australia's Nullarbor, hopes the feeling still registers in the bones of her long-dead ancestors. On March 14, the remains of eight Mirning ancestors were returned to their country and buried. It is understood that the ancestors lived between the late 1800s and 1979, and their remains had most recently been stored at the WA Museum. While little is known about how they died, it is understood some may have been alive during a tragic period in the Nullarbor's history. Oral histories and a 140-year-old police report indicate murders and poisonings may have taken place on Mirning country during some of their lifetimes. Ms Peel, who chairs the WA Mirning People Aboriginal Corporation (WAMPAC), says she hopes her relatives are now at peace. "I get teary-eyed just thinking about it," she says. John Graham says the burial marked the best day of his 83-year-old life. The Mirning elder, who was recovering from a recent operation at the time, has spent decades lobbying to bring his eight ancestors back to their country. There was no way he was going to miss it. "It was up near 45 degrees," he remembers. The remains of the seven repatriated Mirning people were taken from the Nullarbor region between 1900 and 1991, with the eighth removed at an unknown date. They then fell into the hands of the WA Museum. Mr Graham and the WA Museum's head of anthropology and archaeology, Ross Chadwick, have been working to return them to country for decades. "They shouldn't have been taken away from there in the first place," Mr Graham says. "But back in them days, when they found remains, they just took them and put them in the museum." Mr Chadwick says the practice caused great pain across Indigenous communities. "[Repatriation] is a way of trying to heal that hurt," he says. "To address the trauma that comes from that and to empower communities to make decisions around the care of their ancestors in a way that provides them with strength and some sort of comfort." A WAMPAC spokesperson says two of the ancestors had been found in a Nullarbor cave in 1991 by cave explorers. It is understood the pair died in the late 1800s after possibly getting lost in the cave and running out of food and water. The spokesperson says five others were found close to Eucla — three in the early 1900s, one in 1979, and another at an unknown date — and taken by police, anthropologists, doctors and professors. Another man was taken, by an unknown person, from the Nullarbor Plain at some point before 1907. Mr Graham says he is relieved his ancestors are finally back where they belong. "Finally achieving something like that was a good feeling," he says. While it is not known how these ancestors died, Mr Graham says some may have lived during a horrific time in the region's history. "There was a lot of violence," he says. Mirning oral histories describe murders and poisonings on the Nullarbor Plain following colonisation. Mr Graham says knowledge of these struggles, passed down through his family, had made him even more motivated to bring the eight Mirning people home. In 1881, WA police constable George Truslove investigated claims that pastoralists William McGill and his partners Thomas and William Kennedy were mistreating Mirning people in the region. The hand-written police report, which has been seen by the ABC, included claims that McGill killed two people by feeding them poisoned pudding. Historian Peter Gifford, who analysed the police report in 1994, says McGill was also accused of shooting and cutting the throats of other Mirning people. "Truslove's report effectively accused McGill and the Kennedys of multiple murder," Mr Gifford's paper states. "Its contents were mostly hearsay, which then, as now, was not admissible in a court of law. "Yet, as an experienced police officer, he must have been aware of the gravity of such allegations, which would be seen at high governmental levels, and he cannot therefore have made them lightly." The allegations have not been widely reported. But Mr Gifford's paper goes on to note that similar allegations were made by overland telegraph stationmasters at Eyre and Eucla eight years later, which were again ignored by authorities. A Government Gazette extract shows McGill went on to be appointed a "protector of Aborigines" in 1894, despite the allegations. "The Mirning people of the southern Nullarbor were still denied anything resembling natural justice," the paper states. It also references the graves of 16 Aboriginal people "who had all come to violent ends" at the pastoralist's hands. A WAMPAC spokesperson says the impact of past brutality continues to be felt. "Oral histories speak of widespread violence, with many different individuals and institutions involved in acts of genocide," the spokesperson says. "This was part of a broader, systemic pattern seen across Australia. "Today, we're encouraged by the positive working relationships we have with pastoralists on Mirning country, who have been supportive of the Mirning people returning home." Traditional owners say they do not want to disclose the location of the recent burial site, out of fear it will be vandalised. But it is marked with a boulder and plaque. After the burial, around 60 people attended a barbecue with the Mirning community, where traditional foods were served and a speech was made. Ms Peel, whose parents are original WA Mirning native title claim applicants, says even though she never met her ancestors, it was a heartwarming experience. "They are home. They are at rest," she says.
RNZ News
25-06-2025
- Science
- RNZ News
World's only known eyeless wasp discovered mummified in Nullarbor Plain cave
By Peter de Kruijff , ABC The mummified remains of a male blind cave wasp found underground in the Nullarbor. Photo: Supplied/Jess Marsh Jess Marsh had spent 45 minutes crawling and twisting through the claustrophobic limestone tunnels of the Nullarbor Plain when she first saw it. Perched on the wall of a cave chamber was the almost perfect mummified remains of small, reddish wasp about 2 centimetres long with translucent wings. Its stand-out feature? It had no eyes. "This wasp is the only wasp in the world that is known to have adapted like that to a cave life," Dr Marsh said, an entomologist and arachnologist - an insect and spider expert - at the University of Adelaide. "The first specimen was actually climbing up the wall of the cave ... like they'd been freeze-dried." University of Adelaide entomologist and arachnologist Jess Marsh collecting samples in a Nullarbor cave. Photo: Supplied/Steve Milner The preserved insect, yet to be taxonomically described, was one of the crowning discoveries from a research expedition in April with cavers from the Australian Speleological Federation (ASF). Eleven caves on the Western Australia side of the 200,000 square kilometre Nullarbor region were examined in a biological survey, funded by the Australian Research Council and the Hermon Slade Foundation. The caves were selected based on previous sightings of underground critters by cave-exploring citizen scientists. ASF president Andrew Stempel said the trip, which found specimens at five of the sites, had been an "incredible" collaboration connecting caver knowledge with expert scientists. "It took many years and many cavers and a lot of hard yards," he said. The wasp was found in a cave that contains passages that run for about 10 kilometres, which had previously been mapped out by scientists. It wasn't the only remains the researchers found either. The cave was full of thousands of mummified bodies of spiders, cockroaches, centipedes and other insects, preserved thanks to the salty cave conditions. A dead cockroach and centipede found preserved in a salty Nullarbor cave. Photo: Supplied/Steve Milner and Jess Marsh Dr Marsh said when she first locked eyes on the site she was captured by its otherworldly beauty. "It's not like anything I've ever seen before," she said. "[It had] the most amazing cave decorations I've ever seen, so stalactites, stalagmites and huge long salt straws [thin pillars of salt that sway in the cave breeze]. "It's like this weird world frozen in time that's completely dominated by invertebrates... some of the invertebrates have died almost mid-action." No living critters remain because of some sort of invertebrate world-ending cataclysm that occurred an unknown number of years ago. What excited Dr Marsh was the potential relationship between the blind arachnids and the wasp, which she thought was from the spider-hunting family called Pompilidae. Hundreds of dead invertebrates were found in a Nullarbor cave including a concentrated group of spiders in a spot dubbed "party rock". Photo: Supplied/Steve Milner "It's a really interesting story if they've both evolved to a cave-adapted lifestyle where they've lost their eyes independently but are linked through parasitism," she said. Collection manager at the Australian Museum - not part of the recent expedition - Matt Shaw said finding a wasp and spiders with regressed features was fantastic for science. "Because as [Charles] Darwin pointed out... regressed animals including cave animals were an important source of evidence for understanding evolution," he said. The exact age of the invertebrates in the mummy mausoleum was yet to be analysed, but Dr Marsh said they were so well preserved 'they could have died yesterday'". A dead Troglodiplura spider specimen could possibly be a new species. Photo: Supplied/Steve Milner Elsewhere on the trip, the expedition found some creatures that were still kicking, including two species of eyeless spiders. Both could fill up the palm of your hand but are incredibly different. One, which hangs underneath a web weaved between rocks is believed to be from the genus Tartarus, named after the prison for titans in Greek mythology. The second is large, hairy and probably part of the Troglodiplura genus, but distantly related to tarantulas, funnel webs and trapdoor spiders. "We don't know yet if it's a new species or if it's one of the already described ones," Dr Marsh said. There are five spiders in Troglodiplura, including four that were described only a few years ago from tiny fragments found in museum collections. Both Tartarus and Troglodiplura spiders have only been found on the Nullarbor. And there is a belief among arachnologists that some Nullarbor spider species may only be found in single caves rather than multiple sites. Dr Marsh said the latest trip, along with other research, challenged the idea the region was not particularly special for biodiversity. "The number and the diversity of species that may be surviving and living in the caves on the Nullarbor is actually much higher than we we initially thought," she said. A live web-weaving blind spider likely to be a member of the Tartarus genus. Photo: Supplied/Steve Milner With the growing knowledge of underground species comes a greater awareness of potential threats. In caves accessible to mammals, Dr Marsh said invasive foxes proposed a big threat to blind spiders. A site with living arachnids from the most recent trip had fox scat that contained spider fangs. "The risk of extinction for a lot of those [underground] species through development, impact by humans, changes to water movement across the landscape... is really very high," she said. While the South Australia side of the Nullarbor is in the process of being made a World Heritage site, the WA side is not. All of the recent cave surveys were done within an area ear-marked for the largest proposed green energy project in Australia. The 70 gigawatt Western Green Energy Hub would see about 3000 turbines and six million solar panels installed across 20,000sqkm of land. The project has come under scrutiny from cavers concerned about potential impacts to the unique cave systems. Project chief executive Raymond Macdonald said less than five percent of the total surface area would be impacted, and that the company was currently mapping a directory of caves, sink holes and karst feature locations. "This new accuracy will ensure that significant features are totally avoided when selecting infrastructure locations," he said. The project's management is currently in discussion with state and federal regulators about what environmental studies will be needed as the project proposal is reviewed. An Indigenous land-use agreement is also being negotiated with the area's Traditional Owners, the Mirning. A WA Mirning People Aboriginal Corporation spokesperson said the whole ecosystem in the Nullarbor was significant. "Our priority is always to protect the environment as a whole, while placing particular emphasis on rare and endangered species," they said. - ABC
RNZ News
25-06-2025
- Science
- RNZ News
World's only known eyeless wasp discovered mummified in Nullarbor cave
By Peter de Kruijff , ABC The mummified remains of a male blind cave wasp found underground in the Nullarbor. Photo: Supplied/Jess Marsh Jess Marsh had spent 45 minutes crawling and twisting through the claustrophobic limestone tunnels of the Nullarbor Plain when she first saw it. Perched on the wall of a cave chamber was the almost perfect mummified remains of small, reddish wasp about 2 centimetres long with translucent wings. Its stand-out feature? It had no eyes. "This wasp is the only wasp in the world that is known to have adapted like that to a cave life," Dr Marsh said, an entomologist and arachnologist - an insect and spider expert - at the University of Adelaide. "The first specimen was actually climbing up the wall of the cave... like they'd been freeze-dried." University of Adelaide entomologist and arachnologist Jess Marsh collecting samples in a Nullarbor cave. Photo: Supplied/Steve Milner The preserved insect, yet to be taxonomically described, was one of the crowning discoveries from a research expedition in April with cavers from the Australian Speleological Federation (ASF). Eleven caves on the Western Australia side of the 200,000 square kilometre Nullarbor region were examined in a biological survey, funded by the Australian Research Council and the Hermon Slade Foundation. The caves were selected based on previous sightings of underground critters by cave-exploring citizen scientists. ASF president Andrew Stempel said the trip, which found specimens at five of the sites, had been an "incredible" collaboration connecting caver knowledge with expert scientists. "It took many years and many cavers and a lot of hard yards," he said. The wasp was found in a cave that contains passages that run for about 10 kilometres, which had previously been mapped out by scientists. It wasn't the only remains the researchers found either. The cave was full of thousands of mummified bodies of spiders, cockroaches, centipedes and other insects, preserved thanks to the salty cave conditions. A dead cockroach and centipede found preserved in a salty Nullarbor cave. Photo: Supplied/Steve Milner and Jess Marsh Dr Marsh said when she first locked eyes on the site she was captured by its otherworldly beauty. "It's not like anything I've ever seen before," she said. "[It had] the most amazing cave decorations I've ever seen, so stalactites, stalagmites and huge long salt straws [thin pillars of salt that sway in the cave breeze]. "It's like this weird world frozen in time that's completely dominated by invertebrates... some of the invertebrates have died almost mid-action." No living critters remain because of some sort of invertebrate world-ending cataclysm that occurred an unknown number of years ago. What excited Dr Marsh was the potential relationship between the blind arachnids and the wasp, which she thought was from the spider-hunting family called Pompilidae. Hundreds of dead invertebrates were found in a Nullarbor cave including a concentrated group of spiders in a spot dubbed "party rock". Photo: Supplied/Steve Milner "It's a really interesting story if they've both evolved to a cave-adapted lifestyle where they've lost their eyes independently but are linked through parasitism," she said. Collection manager at the Australian Museum - not part of the recent expedition - Matt Shaw said finding a wasp and spiders with regressed features was fantastic for science. "Because as [Charles] Darwin pointed out... regressed animals including cave animals were an important source of evidence for understanding evolution," he said. The exact age of the invertebrates in the mummy mausoleum was yet to be analysed, but Dr Marsh said they were so well preserved 'they could have died yesterday'". A dead Troglodiplura spider specimen could possibly be a new species. Photo: Supplied/Steve Milner Elsewhere on the trip, the expedition found some creatures that were still kicking, including two species of eyeless spiders. Both could fill up the palm of your hand but are incredibly different. One, which hangs underneath a web weaved between rocks is believed to be from the genus Tartarus, named after the prison for titans in Greek mythology. The second is large, hairy and probably part of the Troglodiplura genus, but distantly related to tarantulas, funnel webs and trapdoor spiders. "We don't know yet if it's a new species or if it's one of the already described ones," Dr Marsh said. There are five spiders in Troglodiplura, including four that were described only a few years ago from tiny fragments found in museum collections. Both Tartarus and Troglodiplura spiders have only been found on the Nullarbor. And there is a belief among arachnologists that some Nullarbor spider species may only be found in single caves rather than multiple sites. Dr Marsh said the latest trip, along with other research, challenged the idea the region was not particularly special for biodiversity. "The number and the diversity of species that may be surviving and living in the caves on the Nullarbor is actually much higher than we we initially thought," she said. A live web-weaving blind spider likely to be a member of the Tartarus genus. Photo: Supplied/Steve Milner With the growing knowledge of underground species comes a greater awareness of potential threats. In caves accessible to mammals, Dr Marsh said invasive foxes proposed a big threat to blind spiders. A site with living arachnids from the most recent trip had fox scat that contained spider fangs. "The risk of extinction for a lot of those [underground] species through development, impact by humans, changes to water movement across the landscape... is really very high," she said. While the South Australia side of the Nullarbor is in the process of being made a World Heritage site, the WA side is not. All of the recent cave surveys were done within an area ear-marked for the largest proposed green energy project in Australia. The 70 gigawatt Western Green Energy Hub would see about 3,000 turbines and six million solar panels installed across 20,000sqkm of land. The project has come under scrutiny from cavers concerned about potential impacts to the unique cave systems. Project chief executive Raymond Macdonald said less than five percent of the total surface area would be impacted, and that the company was currently mapping a directory of caves, sink holes and karst feature locations. "This new accuracy will ensure that significant features are totally avoided when selecting infrastructure locations," he said. The project's management is currently in discussion with state and federal regulators about what environmental studies will be needed as the project proposal is reviewed. An Indigenous land-use agreement is also being negotiated with the area's Traditional Owners, the Mirning. A WA Mirning People Aboriginal Corporation spokesperson said the whole ecosystem in the Nullarbor was significant. "Our priority is always to protect the environment as a whole, while placing particular emphasis on rare and endangered species," they said. - ABC
The Guardian
24-06-2025
- Business
- The Guardian
Scientists sound the alarm for Nullarbor's fragile limestone caves and unique underground creatures
On the Nullarbor plain, the world's largest hydrogen export hub is being developed, a colossal renewable energy and industrial project comprising up to 3,000 wind turbines and 60 million solar modules – which, at 70GW capacity, is larger than the national grid. Beneath it lies an internationally significant limestone cave system, a fragile home to globally unique creatures, and a time capsule of life since the Pliocene. As the Western Green Energy Hub's assessment process begins under state and federal environment laws, scientists warn the development threatens the treasures below. The 'ultra-scale' hydrogen proposal for the far south-east corner of Western Australia includes desalination, hydrogen and ammonia production, marine export facilities and a network of pipelines, roads and power lines. Plans include housing for up to 8,000 workers – more than 200 times the population of nearby Eucla, a small town on the Eyre Highway halfway between Adelaide and Perth. If approved, construction will occur in stages, and could take up to 30 years to complete. Raymond Macdonald, Western Green Energy Hub's CEO, says the 2.2m hectare site's relatively flat terrain, with strong evening winds that complement daytime solar, means 'near-continuous' electricity generation. But over the border in South Australia, a 2019 plan trying to safeguard the Nullarbor landscape and 'the world's largest semi arid limestone karst system' wants to avoid new development. Until now, the Nullarbor's remoteness helped to protect it, says subterranean ecologist Dr Stefan Eberhard. 'If this project goes ahead, they propose to not just industrialise the whole place, but to urbanise it as well.' Many people are familiar with the 'immense space and stillness' of the Nullarbor plain and spectacular cliffs bordering the Great Australian Bight, he says – but few know what lies beneath. Sign up to get climate and environment editor Adam Morton's Clear Air column as a free newsletter Stretching 200,000 sq km, the Nullarbor's underground cavescape has formed through karst processes – water dissolving limestone over thousands and millions of years. 'There's this incredible three-dimensional complexity, staggering beauty and scientific value,' Eberhard says. Huge tunnels with cathedral ceilings contain 'exquisite' stalactites and stalagmites, some millions of years old, he says. In a new book he contributes to, Eberhard documents the outstanding natural qualities of the Nullarbor karst he says make it deserving of world heritage listing: caves of great size, beauty and antiquity, rare cave animals, its record of ancient life forms. And aboveground: the vast and mostly treeless plain, and the world's longest escarpment. All of which are at risk from development, he says. The Nullarbor's caves and underground spaces are teeming with invertebrate life, says Dr Jess Marsh, a conservation biologist and taxonomist specialising in spiders at the University of Adelaide. 'A lot of people think of it as a kind of barren land, whereas, in fact, in the caves beneath the surface, we find a whole range of really unusual and really highly specialised animals.' In a recent survey of one large cave, Marsh documented thousands of unknown specimens, including 'a really exciting find': the 'very unusual looking' 2cm spider wasp, the only known species of cave-adapted wasp in the world. Its features have adapted to living underground: no functional eyes, long legs, small wings. 'We think the female, at least, is flightless,' she says. Sign up to Clear Air Australia Adam Morton brings you incisive analysis about the politics and impact of the climate crisis after newsletter promotion A second cave revealed a population of what is likely to be a new species of large, eyeless cave spider – pale, slow-moving, graceful creatures, stringing their large webs between the rocks. A handful of Nullarbor Tartarus cave spiders are already protected under WA state legislation, but these are 'just the very, very tip of the iceberg of the invertebrate life that's under there', Marsh says. 'Each of the currently described species of these spiders are only known from single caves, and it is possible that this new species may only occur in this one cave,' she says. This puts them at higher risk of extinction. Most species are yet to be described. With thousands of caves on the Nullarbor still to be surveyed, Marsh says, 'there may be many more weird, wonderful and scientifically important species out there'. Caves are also 'underground archives', says vertebrate palaeontologist Dr Liz Reed, from the University of Adelaide. 'As soon as they're open to the surface, they just keep collecting records of natural history and cultural history.' Many of the Nullarbor's caves are cool and dry, 'like a tomb', she explains. Significant discoveries have included a mummified thylacine carcass – preserved with hair and tongue – and near-complete megafauna skeletons of marsupial lions, ancient tree kangaroos and giant cuckoos. Stalactites and stalagmites preserve climate and pollen records dating back millions of years, offering insights into climate shifts and patterns of extinction. Caves are fragile and easily disturbed, Reed says. 'More people have been on the moon than have been out to some of these chambers.' The Western Green Energy Hub sits atop an area containing 4,500 known features, including more than 400 caves, 500 rockholes, 1,900 blowholes and 1,470 dolines, or sinkholes. Macdonald says the project's 'core mitigation strategy is avoidance', and that there are plans to set buffer zones around key features. The company is now in discussions with federal and state regulators about studies of the karst landscape, required as part of approvals process. 'They put it slap-bang on the most intensively karstified area of the Nullarbor,' says Dr Susan White, a geomorphologist who specialises in karst landscapes at La Trobe University. Scientists and cavers are still mapping what is out there, she says. A single entrance can open to an underground cavern stretching for kilometres. The Nullarbor's limestones are highly porous and permeable, she adds – full of holes and not very strong. 'You hit them with a hammer and they disintegrate,' she says. 'It's going to damage the conservation values of the Nullarbor, but it's also going to create problems for them.' 'This issue is not just about avoiding damage to a few caves,' Eberhard says. 'It's about protecting the whole landscape.'
ABC News
24-06-2025
- Science
- ABC News
World's only known eyeless wasp discovered mummified in Nullarbor cave
Jess Marsh had spent 45 minutes crawling and twisting through the claustrophobic limestone tunnels of the Nullarbor Plain when she first saw it. Perched on the wall of a cave chamber was the almost perfect mummified remains of small, reddish wasp about 2 centimetres long with translucent wings. Its stand-out feature? It had no eyes. "This wasp is the only wasp in the world that is known to have adapted like that to a cave life," said Dr Marsh, an entomologist and arachnologist — an insect and spider expert — at the University of Adelaide. "The first specimen was actually climbing up the wall of the cave ... like they'd been freeze-dried." The preserved insect, yet to be taxonomically described, was one of the crowning discoveries from a research expedition in April with cavers from the Australian Speleological Federation (ASF). Eleven caves on the Western Australia side of the 200,000 square kilometre Nullarbor region were examined in a biological survey, funded by the Australian Research Council and the Hermon Slade Foundation. The caves were selected based on previous sightings of underground critters by cave-exploring citizen scientists. ASF president Andrew Stempel said the trip, which found specimens at five of the sites, had been an "incredible" collaboration connecting caver knowledge with expert scientists. "It took many years and many cavers and a lot of hard yards," he said. The wasp was found in a cave that contains passages that run for about 10 kilometres, which had previously been mapped out by scientists. It wasn't the only remains the researchers found either. The cave was full of thousands of mummified bodies of spiders, cockroaches, centipedes and other insects, preserved thanks to the salty cave conditions. Dr Marsh said when she first locked eyes on the site she was captured by its otherworldly beauty. "It's not like anything I've ever seen before," she said. "[It had] the most amazing cave decorations I've ever seen, so stalactites, stalagmites and huge long salt straws [thin pillars of salt that sway in the cave breeze]. No living critters remain because of some sort of invertebrate world-ending cataclysm that occurred an unknown number of years ago. What excited Dr Marsh was the potential relationship between the blind arachnids and the wasp, which she thought was from the spider-hunting family called Pompilidae. "It's a really interesting story if they've both evolved to a cave-adapted lifestyle where they've lost their eyes independently but are linked through parasitism," she said. Matt Shaw, a collection manager at the Australian Museum and not part of the recent expedition, said finding a wasp and spiders with regressed features was fantastic for science. "Because as [Charles] Darwin pointed out ... regressed animals including cave animals were an important source of evidence for understanding evolution," he said. The exact age of the invertebrates in the mummy mausoleum was yet to be analysed, but Dr Marsh said they were so well preserved "they could have died yesterday". Elsewhere on the trip, the expedition found some creatures that were still kicking, including two species of eyeless spiders. Both could fill up the palm of your hand but are incredibly different. One, which hangs underneath a web weaved between rocks is believed to be from the genus Tartarus, named after the prison for titans in Greek mythology. The second is large, hairy and probably part of the Troglodiplura genus but distantly related to tarantulas, funnel webs and trapdoor spiders. "We don't know yet if it's a new species or if it's one of the already described ones," Dr Marsh said. There are five spiders in Troglodiplura, including four that were described only a few years ago from tiny fragments found in museum collections. Both Tartarus and Troglodiplura spiders have only been found on the Nullarbor. And there is a belief among arachnologists that some Nullarbor spider species may only be found in single caves rather than multiple sites. Dr Marsh said the latest trip, along with other research, challenged the idea the region was not particularly special for biodiversity. "The number and the diversity of species that may be surviving and living in the caves on the Nullarbor is actually much higher than we we initially thought," she said. With the growing knowledge of underground species comes a greater awareness of potential threats. In caves accessible to mammals, Dr Marsh said invasive foxes proposed a big threat to blind spiders. A site with living arachnids from the most recent trip had fox scat that contained spider fangs. "The risk of extinction for a lot of those [underground] species through development, impact by humans, changes to water movement across the landscape ... is really very high," she said. While the South Australia side of the Nullarbor is in the process of being made a World Heritage site, the WA side is not. All of the recent cave surveys were done within an area ear-marked for the largest proposed green energy project in Australia. The 70 gigawatt Western Green Energy Hub would see about 3,000 turbines and six million solar panels installed across 20,000sqkm of land. The project has come under scrutiny from cavers concerned about potential impacts to the unique cave systems. Project chief executive Raymond Macdonald said less than 5 per cent of the total surface area would be impacted, and that the company was currently mapping a directory of caves, sink holes and karst feature locations. "This new accuracy will ensure that significant features are totally avoided when selecting infrastructure locations," he said. The project's management is currently in discussion with state and federal regulators about what environmental studies will be needed as the project proposal is reviewed. An Indigenous land-use agreement is also being negotiated with the area's Traditional Owners, the Mirning. A WA Mirning People Aboriginal Corporation spokesperson said the whole ecosystem in the Nullarbor was significant. "Our priority is always to protect the environment as a whole, while placing particular emphasis on rare and endangered species," they said.
