Indigenous rangers, scientists, conservationists and pastoralists are working together to ensure the Kimberley remains one of the world’s great wildlife havens.

The short-beaked echidna is found from deserts to mountain peaks; from Tasmania, across the Australian mainland to southern New Guinea. Its unique backwards-pointing feet give it an advantage when digging. Echidnas also use extended claws on the second toes of the hind feet to scratch and groom between the spines.

Linton Burgess performs a traditional dance during patrula, a return of important cultural fire practices to farmland on the midland plains of Tasmania for the first time in 200 years.

IT WAS ABOUT SIX YEARS ago that I first discovered him, purely by chance. At an hour and a half out of Sydney, my commercial flight turned north-west towards Darwin. And there he was in all his rampant majesty. Running Man Rock, I call him.

It’s one of Earth’s most complex natural systems, home to countless animals. And to the rest of the world it’s one of the most identifiably Australian places. We all know what it is – the Great Barrier Reef (GBR)– and that it’s under pressure. But how can we frame its intricate natural architecture in a new way that inspires people to love it enough to care about its future?