Money flowing to nature: the Nari Nari buy back the Great Cumbung, your super owns a battery by the Murray, gliders move into boxes, salmon come home, a new walk near Ballarat, Lismore's rainforest returns, titanium that floats, packaging grown in the dark.
By Nicole McMahon · 9 September 2026 · 3 min read
Issue No. 18 . 9 September
Money is flowing to nature this week, and we follow it to the ground. On the Murrumbidgee floodplain the Nari Nari have bought back the Great Cumbung, and by the Murray two million people's super now owns a battery. There are gliders moving into boxes in the Great Southern Forest, salmon coming home to California in record numbers, a new walk through the place of plenty near Ballarat, a rainforest returning to the river in Lismore, titanium that floats, and packaging grown in the dark in Auckland.
CONSERVATION
At the end of the Lachlan, the Great Cumbung comes home to the Nari Nari
Where the Lachlan spreads into reed beds and red gum forest before it meets the Murrumbidgee, 34,000 hectares of wetland now belong to the Nari Nari Tribal Council, bought with a $15 million loan and twenty five years of patience. A bank and a public lender put their money behind a people buying back their own Country, and the bittern is booming in the reeds.
Tallaganda lost its old hollow trees in the fires. Scientists hung 120 insulated boxes, greater gliders moved in and raised joeys, and men's sheds are building the next batch.
Two million nurses, teachers and public servants now own a share of South Australia's biggest battery, on one hectare near Mannum, through the funds that hold their retirement savings.
Twenty five years of pulling out culverts and letting creeks bend again, and last winter the most endangered coho in California came back in numbers nobody had seen.
Woowookarung turned ten with a new eight kilometre loop, a new bridge, and a Welcome to Country from the daughter of the Elder who welcomed its first walkers.
More than 17,000 native plants are in the ground across sixteen sites, some already taller than the people who planted them, and three spring planting mornings are open to all.
Mushroom Material feeds fungus roots on wood chips and cardboard, dries the result into little white marshmallows, and presses them into the shapes polystyrene used to fill.
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