THE ARTEMIS story

ARTEMIS NATURE FUND was established in 2019 to develop and implement a threat abatement program for the endangered Golden-shouldered Parrot on Artemis Station on Cape York.

Being a cattle station, our goal was to implement a program that addressed the conservation needs while maintaining (or enhancing) the economic viability of the property. The work focusses on implementing practical actions to restore the open structure of parrot habitat, which has become closed-in due to contemporary grazing and fire patterns.

Major successes include:

• Restoration of 60-ha of high priority parrot breeding habitat on Artemis.
• Delivery of a complementary research project that quantitatively shows predation pressure has decreased through habitat restoration.
• Intensive monitoring of parrot nests in 2021 and 2022 showing that breeding success is now about half of what it was 20 years ago.
• Brokering an expanded Nature Refuge agreement between the state government and Artemis owners (Shephard family) to increase the Nature Refuge from 2,000-ha to 105,000-ha.

The Artemis team has now expanded into Conservation Partners so we can do more work, in more places. See associated pages for more information.