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Greetings from Ray Thomas and the project team at Lurg. This is our 13th year of work in the Lurg Hills but it's already shaping up to be a decidedly lucky one!
We're arranging several huge planting projects that will leave a lasting impression on the local landscape, and we're also offering a range of interesting activities that you might like to join in throughout the year.
The year behind us was the driest on record, so we stopped planting as soon as it became obvious what sort of summer we were heading for. All the earlier planting sites had good soil moisture when planted and were lucky to have follow-up rain, so we knew they would be safe.
But the last 4 sites didn't get any follow-up rain, so we've watered them a couple of times and they're doing just fine. Three of the local schools helped enormously with the "bucket brigade" in December and a Beechworth prison crew has helped out on several days since then.
We are just staggered how hardy these indigenous plants are!! No rain in months, little or no watering, and here they are not merely hanging in, rather they have fresh new growth tips and looking healthy as can be!!
A major part of this success is due to thorough site preparation, careful planting techniques and our unique choice of tree guards.
It's not an accident that it all succeeds so well when the odds are against us, so I'd like to thank people for doing a quality job at every step of the process.
Our 4 major planting weekends achieved astounding results as always, thanks to the generosity, commitment, and just plain hard work of our volunteer groups from all across Victoria. Thanks particularly to the co-ordinators from each group, as they make all the difference in gathering a team together.
Input from wider community volunteers added up to:
And the students from 23 local schools made an astonishing input as well.
We are incredibly fortunate to have such strong support from many quarters, and look forward to working with you all again this coming year.
| 1995 to 2005 | 2006 | Totals | |
|---|---|---|---|
| No of sites fenced | 239 | 16 | 255 |
| Length of fence constructed | 145.3 km | 8.5 km | 153.8 km |
| Habitat protected or restored | 864.1 ha | 34.7 ha | 897.8 ha |
| No of sites planted | 313 | 23 | 336 |
| No of seedlings planted | 284,270 | 28,230 | 312,500 |
| No of seedlings propagated | 264,400 | 47,300 | 311,700 |
| No of direct seeding sites | 18 | 0 | 18 |
| No of nest boxes placed | 174 | 0 | 174 |
| No of nest boxes built | 174 | 56 | 230 |
| Overall no of landholders | 106 | 18 | 110 |
| Overall no of schools involved | 32 | 23 | 32 |
| No of students involved | 6,266 | 1,885 | 8,151 |
| No of adult volunteers involved | 4,400 | 440 | 4,840 |
| Total no of people involved | 10,666 | 2,325 | 12,991 |
We have already made plans for 30 sites, with a total area of over 50 hectares. The list includes a number of very big sites along fertile creek lines, widening the narrow tree lines along roadsides and unmade road reserves, building habitat links from our larger bush blocks to the nearest roadside, and working steadily towards our goal of linking Lurg to the surrounding districts.
Our prime focus is still on enlarging any patches of existing box-ironbark habitat, replanting the understorey vegetation that has been lost through long-term grazing, and restoring the intricate ecological balances that will bring the struggling old trees back to full health.
Basically it's about increasing the quantity and quality of local bush remnants, so that the remaining populations of our rare woodland wildlife can hang on long enough to feed and breed their way out of trouble.
Once again we have several new landholders involved this year, as well as a number of staunch supporters who take on a different project almost every year. It's a tremendous legacy they are leaving to future generations and we really cannot thank them enough!
The dry conditions last year stimulated massive flowering on all the local eucalypts, and there were heavy loads of seed on the trees this summer as a result. Andrew and our team of regular volunteers (Harry, Peter, Rob, Paul) were out gathering and cleaning bucket loads of seed as each species reached maturity.
We had just about run out of seed stocks for some species, so this huge seeding event has been very timely. Shrub seed on the other hand has been well down on previous years, so we're glad for our own "seed bank" that we've been building up for years now.
These extra stocks will be a great help for some big direct-seeding projects we have in mind. This technique is very useful where a site is just too big to plant by conventional means, and even more so where the remnant trees dry the ground so much that planted seedlings have little chance of success
In customary style, we finished off last year by sowing all the seeds for this year's crop of plants. The excellent growing conditions over January produced about 70 trays jam-packed with a total of 50 different plant species. Since school began in late January, we've steadily been potting these up with the help of students from schools in and around Benalla and Wangaratta.
Our germination trials with different seed treatments last year proved to be very helpful in this important part of our project. Working with a couple of local schools, we tried all sorts of seed treatments (and combinations of treatments) to see which worked best. The results pointed strongly to seed scratching with sandpaper as the most effective way to speed up germination of wattles and peas.
So we took this seriously in this year's crop of seedlings, and have been every pleased with the germination rates shown by just about every species. With boosted confidence in germination rates, we got off to a head start last December, by direct sowing several thousand individual seeds straight into their pots. By starting them off earlier, we should have more seedlings of plantable size early in the season, and the process also saves labour by skipping out on the "pricking out" step.
Other trials last year with lower fertiliser rates on the more sensitive peas and wattles lead us to reduce the fertiliser still further in our 2007 potting mix. Up to this point we are growing very healthy little seedlings at last, but it looks like some will take two years to get up to planting size.
Thanks to all the schools who have supported us so strongly for many years with this vital part of our project. The students always seem eager to help these beautiful threatened species, but in this exceptional drought year, we're pointing out how important their work is for global warming as well!
Thanks to Andrew and our regular volunteer team for such a fine job in running the nursery. It's an interesting job with lots to learn and many variables to control. If you'd like to help out, please give us a call.
Finally, thanks to two special volunteers from Germany who are working with our project this February and March; Willkomen Milena und Theresia!!
Yellow-tufted Honeyeaters are found in large numbers, where their box-ironbark habitat remains intact. Their return is an early sign that our work is having an effect.
A party of expert bird observers came for a weekend last October to see what sorts of birds are living around the Lurg Hills. The 150 survey sites included bush blocks, roadside vegetation and some of our older planting sites.
The results show some interesting comparisons, and give us definite hints about how we can best help our threatened woodland birds. So here are a few observations and insights to set you thinking!
It was just wonderful to observe Yellow-tufted Honeyeaters breeding in one of our planting sites, that only 8 years ago was just a paddock with some scattered ironbark trees! That's promising news indeed!!
Grey-crowned Babblers are also nesting in many sites like this. They are clearly at home in the combined habitat of old remnant trees and planted shrubs, as it more closely matches their original woodland habitat than the narrow roadside strips they are often restricted to.
And 3 more families of White-browed Babblers were found in sites that we didn't know about. With a total to 6 colonies now, this declining species appears to have a more promising future than we thought.
Dry, windy conditions on the Sunday of the survey weekend reduced the bird numbers considerably. Not surprisingly, the best finds seemed to be in sheltered gullies in our bigger bush areas where the effects of drought are rather less severe.
So we are very lucky indeed that Lurg has so many bush blocks to carry the bird populations through tough weather conditions. Building on to these remnants, providing extra dense cover, increasing habitat area, revegetating any sheltered gullies nearby, are all strategies to help the rare bird populations hang on and hopefully expand into our planting sites as the trees mature.
The findings from 2005 were confirmed again: wherever the planting density was "basically high enough that you can't see through it", we found many little woodland birds, and wherever the density was too low, it was dominated by common aggressive species like Noisy Miners!
Some more good news is that our dense plantings can be very effective at decreasing the grassy weed cover at ground level. I've seen dense swards of Yorkshire Fog Grass disappear as our plantations dry up the ground, as the shrubs provide extra shade density, and fallen leaves restrict the grass growth.
This creates more and more areas of bare soil and leaf litter, which is just perfect for ground-feeding birds. It also provides sheltered little niches where shrub seeds can germinate without weed competition. This allows the understorey plants to replace themselves over time. And that's vital!
The habitat quality can then spiral upward to become a self-sustaining ecosystem, with all the checks and balances necessary to keep the bush healthy for the long term.
The effects of grazing on bird populations were quite obvious. A heavily grazed site simply loses most of the shrubs, the ground covers, the leaf litter, and becomes so open that sheltering, feeding and nesting potential is much reduced.
And there is also no chance for natural regeneration of these understorey plants, as any new seedlings are eaten before they can reach maturity. So the current shrubs die out without replacing themselves, the pasture grasses dominate the open ground, and this in turn makes germination of understorey seed even less likely.
Paradoxically, the grazing removes precisely the plant species that we are trying to re-introduce. The tastiest ones were first to go when the land was cleared a hundred years ago, and they are the first to go once again. The end result is a static "plantation" of trees only, with little or no understorey.
The habitat quality then drops off seriously, because a dense cover of weeds greatly reduces the ground-feeding opportunities for our woodland birds. As a case in point, Brown Treecreepers were only found in areas of old growth trees with a fairly natural ground cover of native grasses, leaf litter, logs and scattered shrubs. These birds are effectively a good "indicator" of quality woodland habitat, as they are completely absent from weedy sites or heavily grazed areas.
Pruning severe loads of mistletoe has continued on 2 more big sites this year, thanks to the expertise and commitment of a tree climber from Benalla. Once again our aim is to take the pressure off old-growth trees that are in dire straits, and follow it up with planting or direct sowing the missing understorey plants.
We have also started placing 40 specially made possum boxes, to attract Brush-Tail and Ring-Tail Possums into heavy mistletoe areas. These animals love eating mistletoe, but if there are no hollow trees to live in, they simply won't be around!
It's quite revealing to go spotlighting on Greta Rd, where there are plenty of massive old hollow trees. We see stacks of possums, and surprise, surprise, there is almost zero mistletoe!!
Natural control processes like this, have worked well for thousands or millions of years, but only if all the right ingredients are place. And that's where we can help most; to inject the missing link so that nature can start working to heal itself again.
With assistance from the Norman Wettenhall Foundation, we've begun the process of building an extra 240 boxes to spread around the Lurg Hills and beyond. We'll be putting them up in the young regrowth bush blocks that are so desperately short of hollows, and in the narrow strips of young trees along roads and creeks as well. These are the logical places where juvenile gliders must desperately need some shelter as they leave home and migrate across the landscape.
Researchers from Monash University are taking on a long-term project to study the DNA of our local Squirrel Gliders, watching particularly for signs of "new bloodlines" coming into the district with these dispersing juveniles.
Students at St Joseph's Primary School in Benalla built 32 new boxes in just one morning last December, and we are about to build the rest of the boxes with all the local schools this March and April. If you have woodworking skills and would like to help with building the new boxes, please give us a call.
We'd love you to experience these delightful little animals for yourself, so you're invited to join us on these 2 exciting weekends to help check all of our 174 nest boxes. See our nest box flyer for all the necessary details.
Our planting weekends are always an amazing demonstration of "people power", with up to a hundred willing souls working like a well-oiled machine to achieve outstanding results on the ground. And there are always those special social aspects as well — new friendships made and old ones renewed, sharing hearty meals together, or even some good old fashioned bushdancing.
It's a long time yet before we can start planting, but we're busy making plans right now so we'll be good and ready to start as soon as the subsoil gets wet. If you can muster a group of friends we'd love to see you. The attached flyer gives all the details, about timings, what to bring, what we provide, etc.
Our focus has been on the western side of the district for several years now. Some replanting is needed and a few sites are still to be negotiated, but the connections are nearing completion.
We began our focus on the northern part of the district last year, to assist this important connection to the Warby Ranges. There is already a huge corridor across the Lee's property linking with several earlier sites on Welsh's land, and we'll start planting on Ross La and Glenrowan West Rd this year.
But what's the point of all this for Regent Honeyeaters, who clearly aren't worried about travelling big distances? These corridors are mostly on the richer fertile soils, and these will produce the best nectar flows anyway!
It's on everyone's mind just now: we really need to plant more trees to fight global warming. Well, we've already got over 300,000 plants in the ground and they've been doing a steady job for years now, absorbing something like 20,000 tonnes of CO2 as well as making habitat for rare species!
And our next lot of trees from 2007 planting will absorb another 3,000 tonnes of CO2 over the course of the next decade! It keeps on adding up even if we stop planting now!
You may wish to contribute to the fight against global warming through a donation to the Regent Honeyeater Project's tree planting work. It is a simple and practical way to soak up some of the greenhouse gas emissions from our 21st century lifestyle, and it all goes toward habitat for threatened species at the same time!! See our Website for details.
Our plants are still growing well, despite the drought, so it's well worth a look to see some of the success stories spread across the district. We invite you to join us on a free bus tour that will give an overview of our activities and explain the "big picture" ideas that underlie the entire project.
The tour will look at:
We'd love you to join us as we celebrate the achievements of this past year, and take a look ahead to the challenges and plans for the future.
We'll gather at Cleadon, the home of Rob Richardson and Alana Johnson, on Alexander Rd, out Kilfeera way. It's in a very relaxed setting and of course with the congenial company of other interested people! Please ring to let us know if you'd like to come, to help us with the catering.
The AGM is also the perfect time to say thankyou to the people who support our work in so many ways. Locals, visitors and funding bodies all acting together, makes for a very powerful team.
We wish to thank the following government agencies and sponsors for supporting our project. Without their generous financial assistance, landholders could only dream about these changes.
Call Ray on (03) 5761 1515 or email to register your interest, and we'll work out arrangements to suit you.