Excerpt from ABC Radio Hobart site:
Ceramics last a long time.
A really, really long time.
The oldest pottery found is from 28,000 BCE, so when Tasmanian ceramicist Jane Bamford crafts habitat for endangered creatures, it’s not intended to be temporary.
With the guidance of scientists, Jane has made 5500 porcelain sea squirts (essential for spotted handfish breeding but under threat from invasive sea stars), designed award-winning little penguin ‘nesting modules’, and now she’s turned her clay to another animal clinging to survival: the stick-nest rat.
Jane Bamford and Dr Kath Tuft, Chief Executive of Arid Recovery will take you through the extraordinary communal homes the rats build – wait ‘til you hear what they use for glue - and how the work of one potter could help them keep extinction at bay.
And if you listen to the end, you’ll hear when Australian native rats give each other flowers.