Good News at Cowra Forum

RLF Kimberley Beattie and two members of Kyeamba Valley Landcare Group braved an early start, heavy rain, and road closures to travel to the 'Biodiversity Pays' Forum held in Cowra yesterday.

The forum was a great success with interesting and useful information presented by a great range of inspirational speakers.

Particularly exciting were accounts given by ecologists David Lindenmayer and Geoff Kay regarding projects they have been running to monitor the effectiveness of conservation efforts undertaken by private landholders.

Both projects are still in the early stages, but data collected over the past two years shows positive correlations between regenerating vegetation and on-farm biodiversity plantings and woodland bird populations, particularly when compared with populations of these same species in degraded old-growth remnants, where changes to the vegetation composition and habitat structure have caused declines in both species richness and abundance. It seems that encouraging natural regeneration of trees and shrubs, with assistance in the form of block plantings on properties, is starting to have a measurable effect on native bird populations, including increases  in population numbers of several threatened species such as the Superb Parrot.

So well done all the Landcarers out there who have undertaken works over the past few years and decades to protect, enhance and regenerate native vegetation on private or public land - we may turn the tide on extinction rates in Australia yet!