Around 200 million viewers could see the program, titled Keeping it Wild with Jason Raize, which will be broadcast on 197 stations nationwide.

According to Associate Professor Nick Klomp, CSU’s research leader on Montague Island, the program will focus on the island’s 12 000-strong Little Penguin population and its struggle with invading Kikuyu grass.

“The film crew had to work day and night to get their footage. By day they filmed and documented the nesting habitat and behaviour of the birds and then we spent half the night filming penguin arrivals and movements on the island,” Professor Klomp said. 

Located off the NSW South Coast, the US film crew spent four days during October on the island, working closely with Professor Klomp, CSU researchers and staff from the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service.
“They were especially interested in our research on controlling Kikuyu to maximize penguin breeding habitat on the island,” he said.

Professor Klomp said it was a wonderful opportunity to show the type of cutting-edge research being conducted by Charles Sturt University, as well as acknowledging the work completed by several postgraduate research students over the past eight years.

The Montague Island episode is due for broadcast in November.

The University is developing a revegetation plan for Montague Island to combat the threat from Kikuyu grass. It will involve some spraying of kikuyu, planting 20 000 trees and shrubs and deploying 200 penguin nesting boxes to investigate the best method for controlling the invasive grass.

Professor Klomp’s team will survey the whole Little Penguin population on Montague Island during November, a huge task of crawling on hands and knees across the island to determine the total number of breeding pairs.

The Montague population is one of the largest in Australia and New Zealand and is becoming a model for conservation and management worldwide.