Ancient feet, modern rows: Gnow in the Mettler Lake plantation
DR KARLENE BAIN presents another captivating wildlife story — this time featuring malleefowl (gnow) and the remarkable work they do to build and manage the mounds that incubate their eggs. At a blue gum plantation on the south coast of Western Australia, Karlene and her PF Olsen colleagues, Bob and Anthony, uncover an unexpected change in the gnow’s choice of mound-building material. Settle in — it’s a rich story, beautifully told.
March 2026
At first light, the Mettler Lake plantation looks orderly and quiet. Rows of blue gums (Eucalyptus globulus) rise from skeletal sands, their uniform trunks stretching into the pale morning light. Between the rows, long windrows of fallen branches and woody slash mark where machines pushed the harvest debris into linear heaps years ago, following the first thinning operations. To most eyes, the slash heaps are debris, the afterthoughts of harvest, rough and angular, drying slowly. But just beyond the plantation’s edge, where long-unburnt bushland forms a dense, tangled refuge, something stirs.
The First People of this land have long known him as gnow; to others he has also been known as malleefowl — a bird of intricate camouflage, his plumage a mosaic of bold black, white, and chestnut that allows him to vanish into the dappled light of the bush. His body is sturdy and rounded, his short, specialised beak finely tuned for sensing temperature, and his thick, strong legs and feet are built for the tireless labour of a mound-building architect. He carries the weight of a lineage that stretches back over 25 million years. Gnow is a living relic of the Megapodiidae family, a survivor of an era when giant fowl roamed the continent. While his larger cousins vanished into the fossil record, he remains, a feathered engineer of the earth, bridging the gap between a modern world and a prehistoric past.
He arrives before dawn, moving with deliberate purpose. With massive claws capable of raking through tons of soil and leaf litter, he constructs the enormous incubation mounds that define his existence. His powerful feet rake at the slash heap, drawing loose bark and leaves inward and upward, reshaping the piles the harvest machinery once left behind. He creates a dome from wood, coarse yet softened with age, branches weathered by five seasons of rain and heat, leaf litter scavenged from nearby heaps and the surrounding blue gum floor, and bark scraped into place, piece by piece.
This is not his normal mounding substrate. Traditionally, he and his family construct circular mounds of pale, fine-grained sand, each spanning up to five meters across and rising a metre. Within the sand lies a hidden core of leaf litter and organic debris, scavenged from the surrounds and slowly generating heat as it decomposes. From the outside, the mound resembles a small volcanic crater, meticulously maintained to shield the growing life within from the harsh elements and to maintain a constant, steady warmth.
This mound is different, perhaps a rare opportunity to adapt his traditional architecture to a landscape that has already done some of the heavy work of accumulation. He has already spent a month or more scouting the windrows, scraping through the chaotic geometry of branches and bark to find a site where the debris can be reshaped. Many heaps have been tested and rejected for being too densely tangled with heavy limbs or inverted roots that resist his scraping and scratching. He searches only within windrows that lie close to the safety of remnant vegetation, never venturing far into the open.
In place of the predictable sand, he now contends with a shifting tangle of leaf litter, wood fragments and coarse bark, yet his instincts remain unchanged. With powerful feet, he starts to break down the woody materials, seeking to create a softly woven thermal blanket from the fallen timber and shaping a future for his offspring from the scattered remnants of the past.
His mate comes to inspect his work, and they meet on the rim of his newly constructed crater. They greet each other with enthusiasm, lifting their wings in sweeping arcs and bobbing their heads in a rhythmic display of recognition and communication. The display is a reaffirmation of their lifelong bond and their shared commitment to creating life.
Although he has led the initial construction, she is far from a passive observer. They work together, their strong feet working in tandem to break down the brittle bark and roughly textured wood into a mulch that mimics the insulating properties of soil. She shifts finer litter into the core, shaping the crater carefully. Day after day, their movements settle into a tireless rhythm, excavating, rebuilding, and reshaping, two architects of an older world attempting to master a modern landscape. Weeks of patient labour follow, their daily return to open the mound allows winter rains to soak deep into the core, where concentrated leaf litter begins its invisible chemical work. Beneath the woven surface of blue gum mulch, the breakdown of organic matter stirs to life, and the first faint pulses of microbial heat radiate through the mound’s heart.
As the season shifts, the female becomes the primary judge of their progress. Each day, as they open the mound, she descends from the woody ramparts to probe the depths of the crater within the core. Using the sensitive skin of her beak, she examines the finer leaf litter within the mound, searching for the exact moment when fermentation reaches 33°C. When the heat stabilises, she enters the crater they have so carefully hollowed, depositing a single, large ivory egg within the softened mulch. This ritual repeats every few days for months, with the mound gradually filling as she entrusts their legacy to the warmth of the earth they have reshaped.
Once the eggs are laid, the male assumes a tireless vigil over their incubator. From first light, he opens the mound, raking away yesterday’s work to expose the dark, breathing core. Steam rises faintly in the cool air. On cold mornings, he scrapes the woody blanket thin to let sunlight penetrate. As the day warms, he shifts debris back over the top, shielding the eggs. He balances the cooling breath of wind against the fermenting heat within, maintaining the internal temperature with careful precision. Most of the time he works alone, but occasionally she joins him when the core must be opened wide or to fend off an intruder.
Defending the mound requires vigilance and risk. Against smaller intruders like ravens or raiding varanids, the male is a fierce guardian, puffing his feathers out and rushing with a low, guttural hiss to drive them away. The arrival of a fox demands a different strategy of silence and invisibility. At the first scent or sound of this predator, he freezes, his dappled plumage melting into the shadows of the blue gum debris, or he beats a swift, low-altitude retreat into the nearby bushland. His life is a cycle of depletion and recovery. He spends his nights roosting on a low limb at the edge of the remnant vegetation, positioned between the mound and safe refuge. This proximity also allows him to slip into the understorey to forage for high-energy seeds and insects, replenishing the massive reserves of strength required to maintain the mound for another day.
Then, one morning in January, the rhythm of opening and closing the mound suddenly breaks. From the mound’s eastern flank, a small, dark shape emerges through the woody crust. Downy, damp, and impossibly self-contained, it is the first of the new generation, a chick that has spent hours clawing through the suffocating weight of blue gum debris to reach the air. It pauses at the edge of the mound, blinking against the harsh light, already fully feathered and ready for the world. There is no maternal warmth to greet it, no beckoning call or offer of food. The adult male, standing a few meters away, watches briefly before returning to his raking. His biological contract ends at the soil’s surface. By nightfall, the chick has vanished into the dense sanctuary of the nearby remnant bush, a tiny ghost navigating the shadows alone.
Two more emerge as the season wanes, each a solitary pioneer in this experimental landscape. Once the final chick has left the mound, it is abandoned to the elements. The male opens the core one last time, exposing the fermenting centre to the air. The vigil ends, and the scavengers move in. Ravens descend to pick through the hollow, one escaping with a fragile shard of ivory eggshell, a ghostly relic of the life nurtured within.
As winter settles over the plantation, the activity fades into a quiet, lingering memory. Motion-sensing cameras capture only the occasional, fleeting visit. A lone bird standing atop the now-collapsed mound, or the pair meeting for a brief, rhythmic display amidst the rain-soaked mulch. These are not random wanderings, but a testament to the map of the land held within them. Even as the mound flattens and the blue gum leaves return to the earth, the site remains a landmark in their geography, a reminder that in this place, the old ways were successfully whispered to the new. The labour of the past few months is not lost. The core of the mound remains a concentrated foundation of organic wealth, waiting to be reactivated. Perhaps in a few seasons, once the scent of the nest has vanished and the predator memory has faded, the pair will return to rake the weathered debris once more, reclaiming their hard-won ground to start the cycle anew.
From the watchers of the mound
Around the gnow, the Mettler Lake plantation goes about its quiet business under the watchful eyes of a dedicated team. Anthony Wise and Bob Edwards manage the forest for PF Olsen Australia on behalf of New Forests, an investment manager dedicated to natural capital. Their role is a daily balancing act that ensures the commercial success of the timber crop while protecting the biological integrity of the landscape. For them, the gnow and other threatened species on their properties are core components of a healthy, well-managed plantation.
I work alongside them as a contract wildlife ecologist, focused on the conservation and recovery of threatened species. By embedding ecology into everyday plantation decisions, I try to nurture an ethic of stewardship that reaches beyond fence lines and timber rotations, and towards the long-term persistence of the gnow and other threatened species across the wider landscape — a landscape in which the plantation now plays an important role.
This is not work done alone. It unfolds through conversations at gates, shared walks across sand and leaf litter, and the generosity of the people who know the country intimately. Together, we search the plantation and its edges for signs of life. A footprint in soft soil, a foraging scrape beneath mallee, a fleeting shadow caught on a camera at dusk. We use every camera image, track in the sand, and fragment of behaviour to guide how this working forest is managed and to advocate for a future in which the gnow can thrive within it.
While we plan for the future, the gnow remain busy in their present, largely unaware of the humans who guard their habitat. Hidden away in the quiet of the blue gums, their ancient rhythms continue, captured in glimpses by the lenses of my remote cameras. The cameras capture the morning choreography of the bonded pairs, the moments of tension as potential predators approach, the adults’ tireless maintenance of their mounds and, most importantly, the emergence of the chicks. Each image contributes to precious data essential for their protection.
Within this blue gum nursery, we also observed a second pair of gnow scouting windrows and building these unusual mounds. It remains uncertain whether the two pairs are independent, if one is mimicking the other, or if both are the next generation. Perhaps they are adults grown from chicks that once clawed their ways out of these very mounds and are now returning to the only architecture they have ever known.
Not every mound succeeds. The second pair tended their mound with equal fervour, but it was never entrusted with eggs. Perhaps it was too exposed, too unstable, or its internal temperature failed to stabilise. The line between a nursery and a rehearsal seems thin, determined by a delicate balance of experience, chance, and the subtle structural differences of the timber.
Across two years, the primary pair built two mounds (one each season) and produced seven chicks. While not a large number, it is profoundly significant. It demonstrates that life can persist, and even flourish, in a landscape shaped by saws and harvest schedules, particularly where patches of undisturbed remnant vegetation have been preserved throughout the plantation.
What unfolds at Mettler Lake is a story of hopeful adaptation. The plantation doesn’t replace the bush. It provides important habitat because the bush remains. Long-unburnt, structurally complex remnants nearby provide refuge and food, allowing the birds to make use of the space and resources created by the slash heaps. In turn, the gnow act as quiet engineers. Their mounds transform decaying timber into warmth and enrich the soil with microbial life. Without knowing it, they restore as they survive.
As blue gum plantations become a permanent feature of the south coast, they are proving to be more than timber crops. They are functioning as corridors, reconnecting fragments of original bush and allowing wildlife to move through a changed landscape. By working alongside the birds, we are learning that these managed forests can support wildlife not just at the margins, but as a protected and functioning part of the system. Anthony and Bob are even trialling the strategic placement of plantation debris in optimal configurations and in areas that could be more suitable for both the birds and the plantation.
The urgency of this work has intensified following the large-scale fires of January 2026. These devastated many of the bushland remnants within the plantation as well as a large proportion of the surrounding landscape. With much of the traditional habitat and nesting materials gone, the remaining remnant patches and nesting opportunities within the plantation have transitioned from a luxury to a lifeline. In this post-fire environment, survival for this species and many others is uncertain because the lack of intact remnant vegetation leaves them without refuge from predators. Proactive management is no longer just best practice; it is critical for preventing local extinctions.
The future remains dynamic. Harvest will come again, windrows will be reshaped, and debris moved. Burnt remnants will recover in time, but in the interim, the gnow may need a bridge, with nesting resources kept close to the remaining habitat patches that still provide food and shelter, and predators actively managed within the newly open, more hostile environment between them.
For Bob and Anthony, the gnow represent the co-benefits of modern forestry. By integrating conservation into plantation planning, PF Olsen and New Forests support species persistence while improving soil condition and reducing fire risk. The gnow demonstrate what is possible: a future where industry and ecology do not merely coexist but actively sustain one another.
THANKS to Karlene Bain for the story, and Stewart Tutton, Anthony Wise and Bob Edwards of PF Olsen for their input. Editing by Margaret Robertson.
FURTHER INFORMATION
At their Chingarrup Sanctuary near Boxwood Hill (in the Fitz-Stirling section of the Gondwana Link), Eddy and Donna Wajon describe how malleefowl like to build their incubation mounds in the alleyways of revegetation plantings: Chingarrup Sanctuary brings life to the land | Heartland Journeys
Enjoy this National Malleefowl Recovery Group YouTube video featuring malleefowl footage and Dr Joe Benshemesh presenting his detailed knowledge of this bird’s ecology and nesting method: ‘The Amazing Malleefowl’ featuring Dr Joe Benshemesh
The Indigenous Desert Alliance prepared this story about the 2023 Malleefowl Workshop at Morapoi Station involving Traditional Owners, Indigenous rangers and conservation groups: Indigenous Desert Alliance | Working together to look after Malleefowl