The project has been acknowledged for its positive impact in Tasmania and beyond. Centred on the creation of bespoke timber sculptures that serve as homes for threatened native animal species, it has grown to directly involve almost 400 university students, as well as schools, environmental groups, artists, farmers, scientists and members of the wider community.
Groups of students design and build timber structures that are relocated to the Midlands area of Tasmania to provide habitat for threatened native animals, insects and birds, many of the species hotel sculptures provide homes for small biota such as native bees, insects, microbats and woodland birds (mostly pardalotes, fantails etc). Right from the beginning, students embraced not only the challenge of providing homes for these creatures but also their desire to create objects of interest and beauty, resulting in a strongly sculptural aspect to the finished objects.
The Species Hotel project began in 2016 as a ‘learning by making’ project for first-year students in the University of Tasmania’s Architecture and Design course. The program is now a permanent fixture in first-year Architecture and Design, with 21 species hotels built (between 2016 and the end of 2022) and the direct involvement of almost 600 people (first-year Architecture and Design students, Architecture and Design staff, school students, school teachers, Greening Australia staff, scientists, landowners, artists and designers and a structural engineer). The hotels are made from reused timbers and non-toxic materials.
Key statistics on this successful sustainability project include:
- 398 first-year Architecture and Design students
- 15 Architecture and Design staff
- 90 School students (years 2, 3, 7, 8)
- 17 School teachers
- 4 Greening Australia staff
- 20 Scientists
- 3 landowners
- 11 artists/designers/architects
- 1 structural engineer
The University of Tasmania continues its impressive efforts by being the most highly awarded institution within the Green Gown Australasian Awards.
Professor Rufus Black, Vice Chancellor shared what this Green Gown award means to the university:
"It is not what this Green Gown award will do for us, but its impact on endangered species that matters. It will bring further attention to the threatened species we are working to save and highlight an effective approach that can be replicated anywhere where endangered species need a home."
More about the biodiversity of the Midlands
A longstanding monitoring program by Greening Australia found that the Midlands area of Tasmania (where Ross is located), contains 32 nationally threatened native species as well as 180 species that are considered threatened at a state level. These include marsupials such as the eastern barred bandicoot, eastern bettong, Tasmanian spotted quoll and Tasmanian devil, as well as birds such as the Tasmanian wedge-tailed eagle.
Prior to the commencement of the project, work was undertaken by many researchers, including PhD candidates from the University of Tasmania’s College of Sciences and Engineering, to gather baseline biodiversity data (as part of a larger project, Tasmanian Island Ark, involving environmental NGOs, significant Ian Potter grants for ecological restoration, private landholders and producers, GBEs and aligned ARC funded research at the University of Tasmania).
Data has continued to be collected, for example, in 2020, five cameras were installed on the species hotels and provided evidence of both non-native birds and native raptors. A site visit in 2021 found that striated pardalotes have begun to visit and find habitat in the area where the species hotels are located.
Trail cameras will soon be installed again as part of the Wildtracker program conducted by the Tasmanian Land Conservancy. The Species Hotel sculptures have always been just one part of a much larger project, which is seeking to reconnect the fragmented riparian landscape resulting from 200 years of European-style farming by planting at least 800 000 native trees and shrubs to provide important and necessary habitat for threatened and endangered – as well as common – native species (both animals and plants). Indeed, the species hotels are really an ephemeral element within the context of a landscape-wide, long-term restoration project.
