MINERAL sands miner Tiwest has provided a further $300,000 over five years to the Department of Conservation and Environment’s leading nature and conservation program, Western Shield. According to Western Shield, by controlling intro-duced predators the program is trying to bring at least 13 native fauna species back from the brink of extinction. Tiwest previously sponsored Western Shield from 2000 until 2005, and during this period Environment Minister Judy Edwards said “there was an increase in the numbers of a range of species”. The renewal of Tiwest’s sponsorship, along with CALM’s commitment of $4 million over the next four years, will ensure the survival of the Western Shield program. Western Shield uses the naturally occurring poison 1080 found in native plants known as ‘poison peas’ as bait to cull the numbers of foxes and feral cats. “Phase two of this sponsorship will aim at consolidation and increases in the real population sizes of reintroduced species and the proposed additional reintroductions of western barred bandicoots, bilbies and banded hare-wallabies,” Dr Edwards said. Western Shield won the national Banksia award for fauna conservation in 1998.