Nicolas documented this work for the Threatened Species Recovery Hub, filming and photographing the tortoises and the researchers in the field, including the release of young tortoises at a southern translocation site.
The western swamp tortoise is one of Australia’s rarest reptiles, a Critically Endangered species found only in Western Australia, with just a small number of mature individuals left in the wild north of Perth. In a world first, researchers set out to field-test assisted colonisation, trialling whether wetlands several hundred kilometres south, in cooler and wetter country, could offer the species a viable home as the climate shifts.