BASSENDEAN’s latest federal government grant is set to combine cultural opportunities and environmental protection and regeneration following the allocated funding of up to $1.74 million awarded to revegetate brook and swampland.

The Whadjuk Aboriginal Corporation has been awarded the funding to conserve native and threatened species and improve the ecological health at Bennett Brook.

The project by Whadjuk Aboriginal Corporation will address critical threats to the site, including threats to Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation-listed threatened fauna and ecological communities, through targeted weed control and revegetation.

Such fauna includes the endangered black cockatoo species Carnaby’s black cockatoo and forest red-tailed black cockatoo.

The project will also aim to build the capacity of Whadjuk youth in scientific and cultural approaches to habitat restoration.

Students from Kiara College and John Forrest Secondary College Bushranger Unit have already started working to revegetate the area.

Bennett Brook, also known by its Noongar name as Korndiny Karla Boodja, and its Grogan’s Swamp, are both culturally and ecologically significant bodies of water that feed into the Swan River.

Bennett Brook flows through Mussel Pool and joins the Swan River at Bassendean.

It’s home to three native fish species, the long-necked turtle, native freshwater mussels, small freshwater crustaceans and tiny macroinvertebrates.

Quendas live on its banks and the brush-tailed possum often nest in the paperbarks nearby.

Noongar Elder and Whadjuk’s cultural advice committee chairperson Greg Ugle said it was really good that the project would benefit Noongar people with connections to the area.

He said the Whadjuk cultural advice committee and Traditional Owners would be involved in deciding on what happens with the land and planning its restoration with native flora.

He said the land was part of a transfer under Indigenous land use agreements and it was important to recognise the area’s significance for broader Noongar connection, rather than Whadjuk only.

Whadjuk Aboriginal Corporation chief executive officer Lisa Dobrin said the grant offered a unique opportunity and meaningful collaboration between Noongar people, state and federal governments and the wider community.

“The project brings together the cultural wisdom of Whadjuk traditional knowledge holders with modern conservation science, creating a powerful partnership that will protect threatened species, restore native vegetation, and train young Whadjuk people in both traditional and contemporary environmental management practices,” she said.