Department of Environment and Conservation Reserve (DEC Reserve)

The narrow margin of land that forms the foreshore of the Swan River Estuary is an A Class Reserve managed by the Department of Environment and Conservation.

This project site forms part of the extremely important A Class Nature Reserve Number 35066 – the Alfred Cove Nature Reserve - and borders the Swan Estuary Marine Park.

It has National Trust of Australia (WA) classification as ‘last remaining area of shoreline samphire and rush on the lower estuary’ and is one of the three remaining mudflat feeding grounds within the Swan Estuary. The site forms part of a Bush Forever Protection area- BFS331 - which is regionally significant as a contiguous bushland/wetland linkage. It provides habitat for a large variety of water birds. It has world significance as a staging point for trans-equatorial migratory birds from as far as the Arctic Circle.

Thanks in part to the efforts of FOAF, a low black cyclone fence now protects most of this margin from general access, allowing birdlife to inhabit the vegetation relatively undisturbed.

Given its considerable length (running from Point Walter to the vicinity of Tompkins Park), and significant differences the condition of pockets of its vegetation and hence rehabilitation needs, the Friends of Attadale Foreshore has divided the Reserve into separate Project Areas.

The area that FOAF first tackled is the area parallel to Burke Drive between Page Street and Haig Road. Work on this site commenced in 2001. We call it our Initial Project.