Rare Oaklands Donkey orchid population protected with fencing

There is believed to be fewer than 1000 Oaklands Donkey orchid left in the wild and senior land services officer Shanna Rogers said the discovery in a travelling stock reserve was only the fourth known population.

"Orchids are incredibly beautiful little species of plants," she said.

"Given that this one is only found in pine country on quite sandy soil between Oaklands and Urana, it was quite a bonus to find this population that we were unaware of in the area.

"It was a no-brainer in terms of fencing off that little patch, the travelling stock can still access other parts of the reserve, so we just need to prevent it from being trampled or grazed out while its flowering."

Travelling stock reserves Ranger Roger Harris said it was important to protect the orchid, particularly when it was flowering and seed setting, such as at this time of year.

"This is a great example of the enormous value of travelling stock reserves as both a resource for graziers and a haven for native flora and fauna," he said.

"When managed well and used appropriately by graziers and the public alike, they can fulfill both roles."

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Senior land services officer Natasha Lappin said she hoped to see the endangered orchid population grow.

"Now that we have a fence around the population hopefully that will mean they will be able to continue to expand,"she said.

"We've been monitoring that population every year since we discovered it and this year there was actually a couple of hundred plants.

"They would have been there in the ground, probably, because they're tubers under the ground and with the nice wet season they've all kind of come up and said hello, which is awesome."

Ms Lappin said there were plans in place to translocate Donkey orchids growing at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Melbourne to the travelling stock reserve.

"We're going to be planting those next year," she said.

"So that's all been fenced off as well.

"I'm very excited and humbled to be part of a project that involves endangered species.

"It's really quite a significant thing to try to keep something that's so rare in our environment so going forward, future generations can admire it as well.

"It's really quite a wonderful thing to be involved in and the plants themselves are quite spectacular to look at, they're beautiful."

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