Q: Where did your passion for nature stem from?
A: My love of nature started from childhood. I was very fortunate to spend lots of free time outside, either on the farm with my grandparents, or off in the bush all day riding horses with my family. Working as a Field Guide was very much a natural progression for me and something that I have serendipitously returned to several times in my professional life.

Q: What makes this area of the Greater Blue Mountains so special to work in?
A: The Greater Blue Mountains is an ancient landscape – there is a true sense of timelessness as soon as you get off the beaten track, which I truly admire. The sheer diversity of fauna and flora and the landscape has so many contrasts in it – there’s harsh ironstone country with jagged sandstone, contrasted with the most sensitive, fragile, pristine rainforest and gullies. I am fascinated by it.

Q: What would you like to achieve within your role over the next five years?
A: That’s pretty simple. There are two things that I’d be very proud of achieving – the big one is to see Wolgan Valley once again carpeted with grassy woodlands. The second thing I’d be proud to achieve is to discover that one of the kids that has gone through the Wolgan Rangers program has gone on to study to be a conservationist or environmentalist.

Q: Sustainability is incredibly important to you. Tell us about some of the work you have done so far?
A: The most significant one for me is the move to zero single-use plastic at the resort. A long-term goal for us is to minimize the waste sent to landfills and maximize recycling, which guides all of our actions and initiatives. We are now participating in a bin-trim program which will see food waste converted into water, and we are committed to continuing to innovate and find solutions to further reduce single-use plastics on the resort.

Q: What regeneration projects are you working on right now?
A: We are currently working on mapping significant, hollow-bearing trees on the property. The reason it’s so exciting is because those older, significant trees (most over 150 years old) provide homes for so many different species of wildlife, so if we can collect some baseline data it will help us to learn more about the impact of the 2019 bushfires on some of the wildlife. We do this by walking around, looking at the trees and manually recording the data.

Another project we are working on is habitat restoration. This involves us moving and shifting around coarse, woody debris to improve habitat complexity. This helps us to create shelters and wildlife corridors, which is so important following the bushfires.

Q: What conservation and regeneration steps are in place to restore the natural habitat?
A: Many areas of bushland remain untouched, which is a true blessing for wildlife biodiversity. Habitat restoration work has commenced and will support the regeneration of impacted areas. Several ‘Habitat Recovery Areas’ have been identified and will provide an important source of environmental data as we continue to monitor the recovery of wildlife and ecosystems in these areas.

As a conservation resort, we have built a seed bank of over one million seeds representing 25 native species over the past 10 years. These seedlings are now playing a vital role in repopulating areas of damage during our daily Conservation Experience. We aim to help to re-establish habitats in impacted areas by collecting fallen timber, organic matter and branches and using this to recreate natural habitat complexity. This supports the ecosystem, particularly for insects, reptiles and small marsupials who have been most heavily impacted by the bushfires.

Meet Simone Brooks