Native plants and animals

Plant native trees and shrubs. For advice on the best species to plant in your area, see the native plant selector or visit Council’s Community Nursery.

Install a bird bath or pond, safely secured away from small children and pets

Put up a nest box. Our Community Nursery supplies possum boxes for a small fee or you can build your own.

Conserve and create habitat. This can be as simple as providing small branches or rocks for wildlife to hide under.

Join our Greenweb Program.

Please don’t.

Feeding native animals can cause them serious harm.

Bread is especially harmful but even meat, seeds, fruit and honey can do more harm than good.

You can help provide for native fauna by planting flowering native trees and shrubs in your garden.

Plants such as hakeas, grevilleas, acacias and melaleucas provide habitat and nutrition for birds, possums and vulnerable native species, including the Grey-headed Flying-fox.

As a rule, Council does not interfere with native fauna.

We encourage residents to live alongside local wildlife.

If you have a serious problem with native fauna, contact us.

Report injured wildlife to WIRES on 1300 094 737.

We need to find out more about the local wildlife. By collecting and collating data, we can make science-based decisions to properly conserve and manage the animals that visit and live in Sutherland Shire.

The information you provide will be current. If data can be collected on a large scale - and include both public and private land - it will greatly assist in our analysis and research.

This data will be a useful resource in the decision-making and planning of works as it can measure the health of natural ecosystems by detecting changes in fauna numbers and species types.

Report wildlife sightings

Important sightings that can be verified will be passed on to NSW BioNet, a state-wide portal for information about plants and animals in NSW.