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# Two hundred thousand plants and ninety seven species: the Beeliar bush is coming back
- URL: https://www.earthtoseanews.com/beeliar-bush/
- Published: 2026-10-24T12:19:27.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-24T13:09:41.000Z
- Description: In 2016 a strip of Perth's Beeliar Wetlands was cleared for a highway extension that was never built. Eight years after 280,000 seedlings went in, the survey is back: 97 species of animal, Carnaby's cockatoos among them, and a bush that is well on its way.
- Author: Nicole McMahon
- Tags: Conservation, Rewilding, All stories

Beeliar Wetlands sits on the southern edge of Perth, a chain of lakes and banksia woodland between the suburbs and the sea. In 2016 a corridor through it was cleared for the Roe 8 highway extension; the work stopped the following year, the road was formally closed in January 2025, and the City of Cockburn and Main Roads set out on a ten year project called Rehabilitating Roe 8\. About eight years ago more than 280,000 seedlings went into the sand. This month the city's survey of 18 hectares across eight habitat zones came back, and project manager Adam Peck says the bush has beaten his expectations: more than 4,300 animals recorded, 97 species, and about six that had gone from the area now back, including Carnaby's cockatoos and quendas, the little bandicoots that turn over the leaf litter at night. "We've gone from virtually zero plants in the cleared area to probably over 200,000 plants on the ground now," he told the ABC. Some things cannot be planted at all: the orchids have to come in on their own, and they are.

![Two Carnaby’s black cockatoos side by side on a bare branch](https://storage.ghost.io/c/0d/06/0d067be9-327f-4730-b9c3-5f0cdd2bc6fa/content/images/2026/10/beeliar-bush-inside.jpg)

A pair of Carnaby’s black cockatoos, Perth. Photo: Laurie Boyle, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Mayor Logan Howlett, in the job since 2009, reckons the bushland is "probably 30 per cent back to what it should be," and he wants the project to keep going past its ten years. "The initial work's been done, but there's also a lot of work still to be done," he says, and reports on the results will go to the state government as the decade closes. Nandi Chinna, who has been part of Save Beeliar Wetlands since 2008, has watched the corridor go from bare sand to young forest. Everyone involved says the same thing about the time scale: a wetland woodland takes generations to be whole. What eight years have shown is that it starts far sooner than anyone dared hope, and that cockatoos will come back to a place the moment it is ready for them.

### Sources and links

Our short take: the full story is by Lauren Smith for ABC News (20 October 2026).

- [Roe 8 rehabilitation exceeding expectations almost a decade on, by Lauren Smith, ABC News](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-10-20/roe-8-rehabilitation-progressing-well-almost-decade-on/107266880) Peck, Howlett, the survey numbers, Chinna.
- [Rehabilitating Roe 8, City of Cockburn](https://www.cockburn.wa.gov.au/Waste-and-Environment/Rehabilitating-Roe-8) The ten year plan, the seven ecosystems, the 4.5 kilometre corridor.