Landowners protecting waterways with assistance from the Molonglo Catchment Group!
The Molonglo Catchment Group has teamed up with Greening Australia Capital Region to implement the Molonglo Catchment Strategy and a new round of incentive funding is now available for fencing, stock water, tubestock and direct seeding. The application process is simple and it is open to both individuals and groups. The project is funded by the Australian Government’s National Landcare Program.
More than 20 landowners in the Catchment have already committed their time and energy to undertaking restoration works. Once these works are complete, these landowners will have contributed to more than 18 kilometres of river, creek, or gully restoration within the Molonglo Catchment, along with more than 160 hectares of revegetation or vegetation protection.
Carwoola landowners, Rose-Marie and Peter Johnson, explain why they got involved with the project. ‘Fencing off and planting along our creek had been on our wish list of things to do since we moved to our property eighteen years ago, so the incentive funding offered through the Molonglo Catchment Group seemed an opportunity too good to miss. The grant assisted with the cost of fencing about a hundred metres of creek line along both sides and putting in an extra trough (because a paddock was split) and gates for functional access. To revegetate the area, Greening Australia provided a mixture of over two hundred local native trees, shrubs, grasses, rushes and sedges, plus carton style tree guards to protect them. The help of the Green Team volunteer group for some planting one afternoon was much appreciated. Greening Australia also provided replacements for losses due to the dry end to last year and the bank-bursting downpours of late Summer.
For the sake of completeness in rehabilitating the area, we also pulled out briars and hawthorns in addition to our usual weed control. It's been wonderful to watch the growth over the year or so since we started the project, including the increase in natural wildflowers with the exclusion of stock. It's also reassuring to know that the revegetation and stock exclusion will help stabilise the parts of the creek banks vulnerable to erosion. We're looking forward to having a shady tree-lined creek in a few years' time.’
On the Burra side of the catchment, rainfall wasn’t quite as plentiful earlier in the year, but this hasn’t lessened the enthusiasm of the Little Burra Community Association to continue with their revegetation of a creek on community land within the Little Burra estate. After a failed planting a few years ago (grasshoppers eagerly feasted upon the freshly planted seedlings), the group tried again in August 2006. Members of the local community and Greening Australia volunteers, spent a morning planting nearly 400 native tubestock along the banks and in-stream. With assistance from the Rural Fire Service, members of the community were able to water the plants a couple of times to get them through the dry summer.
The survival rate has been variable, with the tubestock planted on the western bank doing markedly better than those planted on the eastern bank, probably due to the difference in site preparation. The western bank had been sprayed and ripped prior to planting, whereas the opposite bank had only been slashed. The group is gearing up to extend the revegetation project along the next section of creek in the coming spring.
For information on how you can be part of the Molonglo Catchment Strategy please contact Angela Calliess at Greening Australia Capital Region on 6253 3035 or acalliess@act.greeningaustralia.org.au.
