Healing Country in the Central Murray Ramsar

The Central Murray Ramsar project is made up of three distinct forest areas the Murray Kolety Edwards and Wakool systems all interconnect and have an impact on redgum floodplains. 

We've had feral pests and weeds in our environment for many, many years now. Can’t expect those numbers to turn around overnight. 

We tend to build projects that are built from the bottom up where community involve Aboriginal groups involved. 

We get more closely to what they want to see, but then we start bringing in government agencies and research agencies to do monitoring and assessments within the Ramsar sites. 

Murray Local Land Services Ramsar Project help build the capacity for our people out on country because it's provided opportunity to work back out on country and access country and heal country but also build the capacity within our organisations, so we can maintain long term employment opportunities for our staff. 

Because we manage the land, we issue permits to Local Land Services. We do the operational plans, so we do work closely with them and their third parties. 

We formed a number of partnerships working with community and feral and pest animal control in the Ramsar wetland areas. Through those projects we work together with treating box thorn and rabbits and foxes. 

They progressed on to working with protection of native wildlife, with turtle projects and those kinds of activities. Murray Local Land Services contacted me a few years ago to do a test of how effective 1080 poison baiting was for reducing fox numbers and whether that protected turtle nests and if we also saw an increase in juvenile turtles and then we're also doing turtle trapping to see how the population structures have changed when that 1080s been used. 

We've been really heavily involved right through our country, and not only Yorta Yorta country, but also Barapa to the north west and Wamba country and further up north west trying to revegetate and rejuvenate a lot of those cultural spots that our ancestors used to use, particularly around the area of the Pollack and I guess it's the standard for, for what can be done. 

I spend a lot of time convening the community as that's what a lot of Landcare groups do. We've been working with environmental water delivery in the landscape with agencies and now we've got a valuable partnership with a range of those agencies on the ground. 

When we brought everyone in together, everyone has a different focus, whether it's a business focus or a personal focus. 

You know, they want to protect their own property or they want to protect their business, or they want to protect the environment. 

And so bringing all those ideas together and sitting around a table and talking about it and finding that middle ground, that sort of everyone is willing to sort of give a little for the greater benefit. 

The role we play is being a conduit between the community and government You can put the turtles back in the water and we'll grab the yabbies and we'll put them back in the container. 

We've become involved in this Ramsar related site to bring water back into some isolated ancestral creek beds. 

We decided that we get involved in this project to try and introduce some environmental water into to make it sort of bit more of a permanent fixture on the farm. Birds like the bittens can be breeding in the rice. They could also be breeding in the Pollack. So there's actually a harbour here for them if they if they want to move further north.

I was at the Pollack yesterday, and just seeing all the natural grasses and the natural water lilies and water plants and that we've helped along over the years come in and re-vege but, we were never able to get that real good head of growth because of the inconsistencies with the water. Now we've got water in there most year around it's just booming and all the native animals that are back in there, you know, the fish and the birds and the, you know, just all the little critters that call that place home. It's just an explosive area. 

For our rangers, we've sort of come back into a landscape that has been managed different to what we would have managed, you know, in the traditional ways. We are having to learn a new way. So we can't do this without the other partners that Ramsar Project have provided us with. 

We're learning new skills to be able to work within a changing landscape. We've worked with all those key stakeholders and particularly the First Nations groups of our area in trying to not only improve and maintain the condition of the forest areas and achieve environmental outcomes, but also try and provide opportunities for training and work and capacity building within those Aboriginal groups and take a bigger role in the management of the managed areas as well. 

The one common, all we all have is that health of the environment and if Aboriginal people it's about a healthy country, to be able to work on country and spend time on country goes to the local community as well. 

I mean, being a person that grew up in the middle of a forest, you know, to me that's a part of what I want and I want to be out in the forest doing stuff. Yeah, we have a common goal to to see that environment thrive and be healthy and sort of hope that that's there for our children in the future.

[Welcome to country]

One of the many endangered and threatened species that we have in the ramsar site is the Australasian Bitten there are figures of between 1500 and 3000 birds left in the world and this particular area around the Milawa forest component of the Central A ramsar site is the global hotspot.

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We're really empowered by bringing cultural practices back on Country everybody coming together First Nations people of the region, scientists of the region, community members of the region and other people that are interested in looking at the whole ecology of that area and work towards a bigger and better outcome.

The objectives of the central Murray ramsar project are around maintaining and restoring the ecological character of the Wetland areas. In reality it's the same thing as restoring a healthy country we have the Yarkuwa indigenous knowledge centre we have the Murray Islands Wetlands working group the actual site is managed by national parks and there's also various Aboriginal people that have connection to the Werai forest and there's also surrounding land holders.

Our role was to develop a wetland remediation plan. What could we do on the ground to achieve a better outcome for Australasian Bittens, making it a habitat that would be suitable for them to forage and nest in the area our local Aboriginal Community they know it is the Bunya bird because of the weird noise that it makes deep boom by the male carries over the water and we've been working with researchers and with the Yarkuwa river Rangers crew to re-vegetate habitat and to try and create more sites where these bittens can find a home. 

What we've been able to achieve so far is undertake monitoring to determine what the values are currently at the site and what the gaps are in terms of wetland vegetation needed there.

With our delivery of plants the murray-darling wetlands working group engage our Wetland ecologist to show them about rushes and sedges and reeds and wetland plants and start learning how to identify some of these plants and what their value is within wetlands.

It may not flood as frequently as it did, it may not flood for as long, it could be a case of that there's flooding that is extended so we're not getting the same drying regime that perhaps we would have had there historically along with things like stock and also pest animals such as pigs and even deer accessing these areas compacting the soil and damaging the vegetation.

The Yarkuwa were able to engage a fencing contractor that allowed their rangers to work with the fencing contractor and learn about fencing. 

We started with a contractor doing pest animal control in sites in Werai and what we're able to do was set the Yarkuwa team up with that contractor and learn from the contractor how they do baiting and then they were able to then in following years go out and do the fox baiting themselves for us.

We think Yadabal Lagoon could be taken from where it is currently, where it is really lacking in vegetation, to a point where you have a wetland site that will be partially covered in tall reeds and rushes like taifa, kabangi and then also having areas where you've got a lovely display of water plants that sit on the surface having lots of different water birds utilising particularly the rushes and the reeds and nesting in those grasses and just having such a symphony of frogs.

A lot of the Ranger team, we've worked with Turtle monitoring so we're starting to see some improvements in that way, different growths and the team gets really excited when they see that sort of stuff happening.

Some of the ranges are young and I think having them get the ability to work with various organisations I think is important potentially organisations they could go work for in in the future.

Looking into the future in the changing environment and what we've seen in the last few years, the projects that we have invested in long term have been able to survive through that, so I think the key to the changing environments gain funding where we can to continue projects in into the future. 

We're building on the successes of the ramsar project in the past to seek additional funding and ongoing dollars to continue the work that we've done and much of the work that we have done in the past around weed control and pest control and community training and support and an Aboriginal group capacity building has a legacy, it's critical that we continue our efforts in their space and not drop off.