The Noongar Boodjar Rangers have been up-skilling in aspects of native seed collection. The journey began several years ago when Rangers learned how to collect seed from Country, and identify, label, extract and clean it, ready for marketing to the bushland revegetation industry.
The seed enterprise is well led at Wheatbelt NRM by Judd Stead, who combines traditional bush knowledge given to him by his grandfather Kevan Davis, with Western knowledge, to make an excellent and aware lead seed collector.
Recently the Rangers received further training from commercial seed collectors Peter Smith and Quintan Husten. Peter showed the Rangers his business set up of seed extraction, cleaning and storage, and Quintan went on Country with the Rangers and gave them instruction on how to look for ripe seed, how to collect it, and gave some tips on how to succeed in the business of effective seed collection. It was two days of valuable instruction and learning, provided free of charge by experienced seed collectors.
The Noongar Boodjar Rangers currently collect seed for state government and carbon company projects and hope to expand their markets for seed to help ensure the survival of our unique Wheatbelt flora and to help maintain and restore Country.
The Rangers recently purchased a vacuum separator to assist with the seed-cleaning process. This machine improves the speed of cleaning seed and the purity of the batch. Pictured in the photos are two Rangers operating the separator to clean Banksia armata seed.
