National Landcare Program

[Music]
yeah um
well these these particular surveys are
a good example that we've been doing
these since 2016 and
they show trends over time and what's
happening in the environment
and and the birds i mean just where
we're standing now
um during the drought we've seen the
trees die and we've seen the diversity
and numbers of birds just
declining you know since 2016 basically
and
was particularly bad after um the 2019
drought
yeah so it gives us a measure of what's
happening
over time
[Music]
one would be habitat clearance and
fragmentation so that they
have less habitat less cover when
they're moving through the landscape or
trying to move through the landscape
and those habitat changes have also made
it
very easy for noisy miners which are
competitive excluding bird they
gang up and chase other birds away so
the
combination of habitat loss and lowered
numbers of region honey it is means they
haven't got the group defense against
noisy miners so the noisy miners can
easily kick them out from habitat
um um there'd be other
other things too we're finding that
there are um
nest predation now that now that the
numbers are so low they don't have the
group defense against nest predators as
well like
butch birds carawongs and even we're
finding now nocturnal mammals like some
of the gliders can
take eggs at night from nests and that
sort of thing so
they're struggling with breeding success
as well so that
it's it's combinations meant that
they've declined a lot in numbers
[Music]

[Music]
this country has been able to hold a lot
of koalas we've had very high densities
in this area means that the country can
be really good for koalas
I've been working in this area for the
last 10 to 12 years and what we've
really noticed over that period is
there's been a massive decline in the
numbers of animals
at the moment in our study group of
animals out of 20 odd females that
should be breeding only one is breeding
at the moment and the others are not
breading because they're affected by
chlamydiosis
I think it's pretty clear that those
heat and drought events are a key player
and my interest is now how does that
affect the way the disease is manifested
in the population
our research focuses on how disease
contributes to that decline
the local land holders are absolutely
fantastic in this area everyone is
realizing just how significant this
collapse is
in the drought and we had him in care
and we had to feed them we fed them in
the morning and we fed them in the
evening more and more koalas kept coming
into care and then we noticed that some
of them were sick and then gradually it
was found out that they had chlamydia
but it was pretty sad and horrible and
and then the drought hit and and it was
just so dry and we even got more and
more koalas that was just incredible
every day there was a koala called the
heat was extraordinarily hot
for a long time and it was
extraordinarily dry and you go to a
place and there was a koala
sitting at the base of a tree and it was
often was dead
we got to know them as individuals and
they're all individuals had their little
quirks the fact that then they either
died or released in that and then then
no more it's very very sad because yeah
I really came to appreciate them as
beautiful beautiful animals they were
startlingly gorgeous
the local community everyone from Every
Walk of Life every single person that I
came across in regard to koalas wanted
to help them not just the gun at our
community in the town but in the
outlying areas some of the people had
animals on their properties for 12 years
or something they knew the animals they
knew they had seen their babies come
along they'd been woken up where they're
screaming yelling at night they knew the
whole thing but they loved them
but then they keep saying and we haven't
seen our koalas for such a long time
the support that comes from the
government through the local Land
Services has also been really really
important and they've also been able to
pull in a lot of experts people think oh
it'll be all right well it's not all
right
I never thought I'd be in the midst of
an Extinction of of a species such as a
koala I am absolutely horrified about it
there's only so much you can do like
climate change is a major player and
this Decline and we can't do a lot about
changing that quickly it's a long slow
process
but on the ground we can make the
environment a little bit more friendly
for koalas
we noticed through the drought years
how koalas are attracted to freestanding
water and they really need to drink
water a lot they need to be able to get
out of the extreme heat
we wanted to be able to enhance areas to
provide more shade and improve the
diversity of food sources we developed a
list of looking at what could benefit
koalas and we identified these areas of
Crown Land so these areas have a real
problem lacking regeneration thinking 50
years down the track all these already
old trees are going to be you know
senescent and dying and there's nothing
to take their place
parts of the travelling stock Reserve
System have been fenced off and
regenerated
it's great that the local Land Services
have got involved in doing this because
it's putting action in the ground
What can people do
the number one point I'd like to get
across to people and to particularly
land holders that retention of native
vegetation is the number one thing that
they can do you can start doing things
like habitat restoration to link those
pieces of Remnant vegetation remove some
of the weeds particularly things like
tiger pear which can be harmful to
koalas adding watering points
particularly during summer times if it's
really hot the other big thing also is
particularly for people on land is to
type their dogs at night too because
koalas can often be attracted to
homesteads because they're often watered
Gardens there is free water there
LLS has been investing in koalas for a
number of years through quite a few
different streams of funding lots of
work with Community groups land care
quite a lot of work with individual land
holders tree planting lots of weed control as well
we've also worked quite a lot on public
land on travelling stock reserves as well
we've also partnered with other
organizations such as Sydney University
with some of their research and with
other government departments as well we
will continue to work I think in into
the future and hopefully see some
positive changes in the koala population
My Hope Is that we'll show that we can
reduce the impact of chlamydiosis reduce
the transmission to new animals and
allow animals repopulating the area to
be able to do that
I really came to appreciate the most
beautiful beautiful animals I was really
surprised how much I'd fall for them but
I did
and so when they when they've not been
here I've really missed them
[Music]

So I'm here in the middle of the Central Coast
at the Central Coast Wetlands to look at a site
that has been funded by the Federal Government's
National Landcare Program.
That's just an amazing example
of how a community group
have come together
to plant trees to restore
habitat for the Swift Parrot and the Regent Honeyeater.
These two birds,
are what you call nomadic pollinators.
They’re highly mobile
vertebrate birds and bats
that can travel long distances on the wing
in search for flowering trees.
With these species being able to travel
such large distances,
they're able to pollinate large areas,
providing genetic diversity
into fragmented patches of vegetation.
Unfortunately, a lot of the nomadic pollinators
are either threatened or endangered.
So that's why it's important that we protect
existing habitat and revegetate new habitat
so they've got places to
come and visit in the future.
Central Coast Wetlands is a
crown land reserve located at Tuggerah,
one hour north of Sydney.
This property was a former
dairy farm
located on the Lower Wyong River floodplain.
This current project with Local Land Services
is looking at putting
in a mix of food plants
that provide
important food resources for nomadic pollinators.
Some of the key species
that we're putting in the ground
include Swamp Mahogany or eucalyptus robusta
which flowers in winter
when there's a shortage of flowering trees
and Spotted Gum or Corymbia Maculata,
which is also an important winter flowering tree.
The Pioneer Creek Project area is a former cow paddock.
It links to remnant habitat
that we've restored here about 15 years ago
and the outcomes that we've seen are phenomenal.
The area that was restored now supports a diverse
understory of native forbs and grasses,
and this is achieved
by shading out of the canopy trees,
which can be realised in short time frames
due to the rich alluvial soil
which supports excellent tree growth.
For this project,
we have
planted out our canopy trees
at least ten meters apart.
This supports the tree growth
which will increase rates of canopy development.
What that also leads to
in shorter time
periods is more profusely flowering.
Over time the canopy will develop
and the shade that's provided
will help block sunlight
and that will suppress growth
of the Kikuyu pastures.
To provide space for trees to grow
we spot spray circles with herbicide.
Once the grass has died back,
we dig a hole for the tree.
We plant the tree in the center of the hole.
As we fill in the soil around the tree,
I create a small furrow
that allows water to run to the plant roots zone.
Around the tree,
goes some newspaper
which acts as a mulch and suppresses
weight growth.
And we water well on planting.
We then support the tree
with a plastic reusable tree sleeve.
This helps
the tree on windy days
and provides some protection from herbivores
like the swamp wallaby
that grazes through this area.
During the establishment period,
the trees need to be maintained by light
hand weeding, brush cutting
or very careful reapplication of herbicide
around the tree
to prevent the Kikuyu grass from invading
and smothering the tree.
This light maintenance is important
until the tree grows above the surrounding grass tussocks.
So this paddock is
a really great example of Kikuyu pasture
being converted into a natural bushland.
It's still got a little way to go,
but as you can see by the trees around me,
it's well on its way
and it's really good to see such good work
that's being done in the community.
Thanks to the efforts of volunteers
and the funding support
from Local Land Services,
we've created a new wildlife corridor.
It's an amazing feeling walking out here
with the volunteer group.
The trees are already above our head
and this project is in its infancy,
it's only a few years old.
We've got trees spot flowering
that we've only planted two years ago.
This place will always be here
for the community to come to,
and hopefully they'll also be able
to watch the Swift Parrot
and Regent Honeyeater
foraging the new habitat that we've created.
It's been an absolute pleasure
working with Jed and the team.
They've done such an amazing job
and it really makes me proud
to see such great results
for native species
and for the biodiversity of the Central Coast.
It's a really great achievement.
So if you've got a patch of
land like this that you know,
you're looking to rehabilitate
riparian area or plant trees and pasture,
please contact your Local Land Services office
and we can provide you advice
and the technical skills
to develop a project that's as good as this one.

[Music]
central west local land services have
been funded
by the nlp 2 program encouraging
land holders and community groups to
understand what the purple p
is today we have members from the dubbo
field naturalists and conservation
society some students from the
wellington primary school who are going
to be
part of a kids teaching kids project
about swine sona later on in the year
we have private land holders
environmental consultants
tafe students and local land services
staff so it's a big combination of
people
the capacity building like the event
we've been to today has been
an excellent opportunity to get people
to know about it
take it take it with them and see if
they have it on their own property
Getting the community involved
it's really good to get the community
involved and engaged
and have enthusiasm for protecting the
existing sites and potentially new ones
people are able to focus on something
that is very much more visible
and you'd have to say pretty it is a
pretty plan by getting that healthy
we attract more people into becoming
involved in the whole environmental
movement the same people then get in
invigorated to do that we've had a good
range of workshops over the past 12
months
including visits to the small purple pea
sites and basic
firefighter training with a focus on
ecological burning
we've also worked with tafe western to
have students undertaking their
certificate
ii in conservation and land management
carry out the practical components of
the course
at the small purple p workshops local
community members have also helped out
with the numerous surveys
and plot monitoring which has helped
raise awareness about the plant and
build community capacity to identify it
in the field and there's also been a
really good response with over 360
community members
attending the various workshops and
gaining information awareness and the
skills to help preserve this pretty
little plant
the endgame here is to try and expand
the extent of the small purple pea
to make sure that people are aware of it
people understand
or can identify the plant and not create
a threat around that by clearing that
land
they might be able to fence it out they
might do their weed control around it
but it's the bigger it's the bigger
picture of knowing that
they've been part of a project to to try
and bring
back one of the many species that are
really on the brink
in australia's landscape at the moment
what difference does it make to people
probably not much but what it is what we
call this thing is a flagship species
it's an indicative species and it's a
reflection of how
humans have been maintaining their
environment if we can't protect
a little tiny pea and keep it from going
extinct what can we protect
you

i want to welcome everybody to this one hour presentation on the regent honeyeater where we're going to be
sharing information on this critically endangered bird and talking about practical conservation management
my name is jackie greg i'm a communications officer for local land services and i'm going to be your host
for today to start our webinar i would like to acknowledge the traditional custodians
of the land we're working on for me this is rajuri country and i'd like to pay my respects to elders past present and
future before we get started i'll run through some quick housekeeping for us
on the right hand side of your screen up the top you're going to see the chat function and that allows you to actively
participate in today's webinar we really do encourage you to put questions in there as we're going through and we'll
try and answer them as we go if you wouldn't mind keeping yourself muted um as we're presenting just to cut
out background noise if you've got a question because there aren't a lot of us um
uh up the top um there's a little reactions button you can just put your little hand up and we'll um call on you
unmute yourself and ask your question we really want this to be interactive and for you to get as much out of today's
presentation as you can um also to let you know that we are recording today's presentation just so
that you're aware of that um and if you do um if you would like to see live
captions as we're presenting up the top there's three little buttons you can click on that and you'll be able to turn
on um live captions so that you'll be able to read what we're saying also
now to get us started i'd like to welcome libby mcintyre who is a land services officer for local land services
and she's been working on the reaching out to the regent honeyeater project i think since 2008 is that correct libby
uh not quite that long not quite that long but um but it's certainly a um
sorry it's about the last 18 years about it 2018 is what i should say yeah yeah
yeah that's right 2000 i was thinking gee where was i in 2008 but that wasn't working on the region um so yes that's
what i've been doing so it's it's been a fascinating journey for me learning about this gorgeous threatened
threatened species so what i'd like to ask our few participants we've just got
a couple of pre-webinar questions that we'd like to be able to ask
so if you could go to your chat function there are four questions that i'm going
to ask and i will ask the question and if you would be able to
put in the chat up the top just pre that's all you need to do pre
and then i'll ask you the first question and i'd like you to be able to just the the parameters that you have are one
i strongly disagree two disagree three unneutral
four agree or five strongly agree and if you could just write down
put one dot and that'll be the first question that i ask and then after that just say
one two three four or five um does that hopefully that makes sense so the first question is how confident are you of
being able to identify the regent honeyeater either by its call
or feeding habitat and its markings if you could just pop that into the chat that would be fantastic everyone
okay hopefully everyone's been able to do that question number two
with the same parameters is how confident are you in understanding the threats
that are causing the decline in the numbers of regent honeyeater populations
not just in the central west but across new south wales
so you just put down number two question number two and then after that
either one two three four or five
question number three and if you get a bit lost i can re-ask
these or i can send this to you after the webinar are you confident in understanding
what management actions are achievable to help slow the decline in regent honeyeaters
origin honeyeater numbers again the same parameters
and the fourth question number four will you look at making any changes
if you're on farm to your farm management with the knowledge you will receive today now i know some of you
aren't on farm but perhaps you might be able to speak to to neighbors or other people that are
farmers and might be happy to provide them with some extra information about the regent honeyeater
and again the same parameters one to five
okay well i think that's um i'll leave that with you and i'm going to hand over to david kellet now who's the project
manager for the regent honeyeater with local land services david's based in grenfell
and he's got he's going to give a brief presentation about the work that's been achieved by local land services
in dubbo so over to you dave thanks lib um i'll just share my screen
and hopefully this pro presentation will load up hopefully everyone can see that
um firstly i'd um i'd just like to apologize i've got a bit of a cold at the moment so i do
apologize if you hear me sniff or if i cough through my very short presentation
and i have only been working on this project now for
nearly four months so just new to it so just a quick run through
reaching out to the the region honeyeater is a project being delivered by central west local
land services that is part of a nationwide effort aiming to stabilize or
improve the trajectory of the region honeyeater by 2023
the region honeyeater is critically endangered and had previously occupied
much of the central west region however its range has declined significantly
the central west local land service services region contains some important
habitat for the region honeyeater and it has been spotted a few you know at a few
locations within the central west region and it's important for us that we
preserve key habitat areas so that passing birds can rest drink forage and
breed while they're here some outlines of the project activities
that we've been conducting over the last four years
we had to establish a data set of the extent of the region honeyed occupancy in the central west
lls region and we undertake 50 surveys in priority
foraging habitat which is conducted by bird life australia
we had to develop a priority site map model and actions to enhance the quality
and the extent of the regent honeyeater breeding and foraging habitat here in the central west region
native vegetation enhancement and restoration activities on private and
public land such as sustainable grazing management pest animal and weed control
and increase the knowledge of identification ecology and habitat requirements of the
regent honeyeater through attendance at volunteer surveying
events field days workshops and webinars like this one
um in 2018 we um we started some incentive funding for
private land holders in priority areas
and that has been available for activities such as stock proof fencing
alternative watering points where we've fenced um either creek lines or
dams wheat and pest animal control and this also covers public land as well as tsrs
supplementary plantings of overstory and understory site preparation planting and
maintenance some of our major achievements over the
the four years um are listed here so the total project area of
just under a thousand hectares of habitat has either been
protected or enhanced um total total area increa including some
um tsrs and and public land with pest control measures just under sixteen
hundred hectares um uh and we run obviously surveys and and
different workshops and um and webinars
so that um that sort of wraps me up i'm trying to give mick plenty of time for
for his presentation so i'm going to hand you over to birdlife australia's new south wales
woodland bird program manager mick rodrick over to you mick
thanks david thanks libby first of all
jackie i'm unable to share at the moment that's that option is
greyed out for me oh i apologize okay um so as david mentioned i'm the new south
wales woodland bird program manager at birdlife australia birdlife have a number of programs
things like shorebirds and seabirds and woodland birds woodland birds are one of the guilds of birds in australia that
are highly threatened and one of the most threatened of our woodland birds is
the regent honeydew and that's what i'll be talking about today so i'll just bring up
my talk
turn the volume on
okay so is that can everybody see that i can't see people at the moment if
somebody could just let me know yes yeah we can see it yep all right great that's great and sorry just before you go on um
mick rosemary's just asked a question uh for david which areas of the central west were the five potential sites in
do we want to answer that now we'll come back to that at the end i think i'll come back to that at the
end dave do you think yeah thank you if we can do that that'll be great perfect my apologies nick that's okay um just
letting you know that all i can see on my screen is my talk so i can't see any of the chat um
if people have questions maybe it's more efficient to do it at the end
yeah because i can't see anything that's coming up okay so first of all i just want to talk about
the concept of temperate woodlands uh as opposed to forests and and other vegetation types so what because we talk
about woodland birds and our woodlands and our woodland birds are a very diverse group of birds and habitat
itself is an extremely diverse habitat type many of what we call
woodland birds that is the only habitat they use we call them obligate woodland birds things like black chin honeyeater
flame robins turquoise parrots they don't use any other habitat type um so it's important to get that concept
of of woodlands clear and what we can see there is a beautiful functioning temperate woodland nice
fallen timber and spreading crowns there's a lot of this sort of habitat left mostly along the great dividing
range and if you look at an aerial photo you can see that you know there is quite a bit of forest left along the east
coast but most of it is this sort of stuff it's not actually suitable for for woodland birds and once
again there's a nice photo of a of a beautiful temperate woodland and people will notice the mistletoe there and i'll
come back to the mistletoe because it's a very important part uh of our temperate woodlands
but when we think about uh what has happened with our temperate woodlands uh that map there is is quite telling
uh particularly in new south wales and on on the western slopes that red actually shows
areas that were once woodlands uh or or wooded areas that have now been cleared
um you can kind of see along the coastal fringe that's where most of the remaining forests are so we're in a
situation now where we've lost about 85 percent of our temperate woodlands and of that 15 that's left most of that
15 is highly fragmented so it doesn't actually serve as habitat uh forward
lane birds because it's really just habitat for for edge specialists such as noisy miners
so when we talk about threatened woodland birds uh the the most threatened are the regent paneer and the
swift parrot they are i guess that the flagship species for for a number of birds that
are recognized as threatened or declining both of these birds uh uh are nationally uh listed as as critically
endangered uh there's a nice nice photo of a of a male regent honey at a in in the caped
valley um beautiful bird uh so yeah so they are a honeydew so they they specialize in eating nectar
uh and particularly the nectar of of gum trees they were once called the
uh flying coachman or warty faced honeyeater but i i reckon we'd struggle to get a recovery program going for the
warty-faced honeyer so it's good that they they renamed it the the beautiful regent honeyeater
so as i mentioned these birds specialize in feeding on on eucalypts and
similarly to koalas they have their favorites so in the central west region
uh their favorites would be the ironbark white box and yellow box they're the key
eucalypts occasionally they'll use stringy barks and other things like that but also mistletoes are very important
as well so just trying to delineate the sorts of of habitat
uh that they use in the central west there's two vegetation types um that regent
honeyeaters preferentially use uh one of those is the box ironbark woodlands and
there's a a photo there showing some mugger reinbox uh with with mistletoe um so michael reinbach i guess
overall you know i kind of think i you know do they like spotted gundam or mugger or yellow box i think mugger is
almost wins out it's it's such a special tree uh when it flowers it flowers for a
long time and it provides an incredible amount of nectar um there are also great
habitat trees for for other birds and animals as well uh and in that environment we get uh the
box mistletoe amino and micellar that's the that's the key mistletoe species we get in the box ironbark forests
uh and yes so the mistletoe itself isn't just a food source for
regent honey it is when it flowers a number of other birds will also use uh box mistletoe and there's some examples
there of photographs i've taken of things like muscle orikates fry birds and there's a brown headed honey here
hiding away fitting on the the blossom in the box mistletoe in that image the other habitat type is the grassy
white box woodlands and as the name suggests the white box you got this albums is the the
dominant tree type in in that environment and it's a it's also a tree that
uh regent honey it is very much like to feed on uh when it's flowering yeah white box
makes great honey and yeah so the nectar feeding birds flock to the white box when it's flowering flowers are
different times of the year in different landscapes but mostly it's a it's an autumn winter flowering tree
whereas the yellow box again another great honey producing
tree flower is more in late winter early spring so it's an important tree for
breeding of of rigid honey it is and often you'll find yellow box along watercourses and rigid honeyeaters are
often attracted to to watercourses when they're breeding and along uh literally if you've got
yellow box sort of out on the the the banks of the river so right along
the banks are the the the river she oaks the um cunninghamiana so these this is also a
very important habitat type so not only do you have the yellow box sitting further away from the the stream but
along the stream we have the the she oaks and the reason that they are important it's not the actual
shioks themselves uh it's the needleleaf mistletoe um amiyama cambadgio and similar to the the
box mistletoe the regent honey is uh feed on uh the needle leaf mistletoe uh
when they're breeding so they'll also take lerp um so what lerp
is uh there are insects called leaf syllables and when a
leaf syllab is is a small insect that they actually build a little like an
umbrella really like a sugary coating to protect themselves and that sugary
coating uh is yeah well it's it's high in high in protein and it's it's as the name
suggests it's very sugary so it's a great food source a lot of australian birds really love flirt
padloads in particular uh a specialized lip feeding and people
might be familiar with with having seen particulates uh constantly getting chased away by honey eaters and that's
because the particulates are trying to muscle in on the on the look so regent honey it is world food alert um and but
they'll also occasionally feed on on other nectar sources such as well in particular callistemons
uh but also um grevillas and um banksias and things like that so they they breed
basically from late winter through to early summer um it's a it's a simple um
cup nest um bound with spider webs grass or even
sometimes artificial products such as wool sat in a fork of a tree uh usually a
stringy bark or an iron bark type thing and two or three lengths eggs are laid
so this is a bird that has suffered a remarkable um fall from grace in in
recent years it wasn't that long ago in fact i might even flick to the to a slide here
it wasn't that long ago when we realized that recent honeydews were in decline and we actually started sending people
out um to not to count them and to also report them that we were getting over a thousand birds reported in any given
season but we're now in a situation where the population of the bird the entire population of the bird is is only around
uh 300 to 350 individuals so yeah so it's listed as critically
endangered under every every legislation there is and what critically endangered means that it's the final rung on the
ladder before a bird is recognized as extinct in the wild it's also had a major contraction in
range it's now extinct in south australia and only really just holding on in victoria and queensland so new south
wales really is the stronghold of regent honey it is i'm just showing that graph there again just to show the the severe
decline in the bird things have kind of leveled out a little bit but we still think the bird is actually still in decline
so why have the regent honey it has almost disappeared well the short answer is we don't actually know for sure but
as with just about any threatened species the loss of habitat is the key driver whilst other birds have lost
habitat as well there's something about the regent honeyeater something unique about it that yeah
that is partly or would it partly explain why they have suffered such um severe
declines and really i think it's it's to do with their their lifestyle choice they are
what we call a rich patch nomad they will actually wander the landscape looking for the best patches so i guess
in a way they're kind of fussy again similar to koalas and when you become fussy and you don't generalize when when
you are a specialist in an environment you do run the risk of declining so
as we speak the the most critical threat um
to the regent honey is is its very very low population so normally regent honey eaters would
occur in flocks and that would establish um sort of
breeding aggregations and they would chase other birds away they would mix it in with the bigger birds and you know but
these days because they're you know literally in the last few seasons uh we've we've struggled to find in some
seasons we've struggled to find any more than five or six pairs nesting across the entire range of the bird that's how
that's how serious serious it is for this species so you can imagine that when there's just a pair here and there
that they have all sorts of issues with nest predation um and competition and things like that
so we're now in a situation where uh yeah we we really are so in that in that
image there it's it's now really um they seem to be confined to the periphery of
the of the greater blue mountains so the lower hunter upper hunter kpd and baragarang are probably the four main
locations uh where region honey it is now breed the northern rivers and northern
tablelands of new south wales are still recognised as an important area but they really have declined
massively in that landscape and of course the central west as well is another area where they have declined
um really markedly northeast victoria they are holding on
and some of the captive releases have happened down in victoria and that is helping keep the victorian population
going so back in 1994 uh the recovery plan was
um enacted and there has been a recovery team um basically undertaking all the actions
that are in the recovery plan since since that time uh so what we're finding uh in recent
years so ross crates from anu has has recently done a phd on regent honey it
is and what he found in his um in his data was that this bird is
is really having a hard time um breeding so the nest success is is way down on
what what the birds were recorded doing in the 90s and even in the 90s that was quite low so so
really um you know if the if if a critically endangered bird can't breathe then
yeah it's it's really it's all over we have to be able to facilitate this bird to be able to breed and the other thing
that ross found which is a bit alarming is that there is a a male bias in the population that there
seems to be a lot of lone males wandering through the landscape and at the same time there also appears
to be a shortage of females so that's a real concern so recently anu conducted at
what we call a population viability analysis which is a fancy way of basically taking
all the information we have on regent honey it is churning it out and seeing what were the what would be
the the the best ways that we can actually save this bird uh and apart from
conserving habitat uh which is a no-brainer really uh the two things that
that they've found will actually keep this keep the region honey from going extinct
uh increasing the productivity at nests so protecting nests wherever we can
yeah so we are at a point now that if we do find a pair of regent honey it
is nesting somewhere that we will actually try and protect that pair to help them get through and and be
successful and the other action is the release of zoobrev birds which i'll talk about more in a minute
so just just a couple of slides on on nest protection uh mostly that's uh
birdlife and anu manage that because birdlife and anu we do uh
nearly all of the monitoring uh four regents and lls do also get involved um you know in
recent years uh greater sydney lls discovered a nest down um in mulgoa and and monitored that and
they were successful but really when we find a nest there's not a great deal we can do
uh we sometimes put tree collars around the trunks of trees to stop possums and
and other arboreal um predators from getting up the trees uh because possums
and gliders do actually steal um what they eat the regent honey and eggs and
and quite often they might even kill the incubating bird in in the process
um but really that's that's only going to address the mammalian predators it
doesn't address the um the birds the avian predators things like caroline's kookaburras ravens
you know there's any number of of avian predators that regent honeyeaters have so there was actually a a workshop held
just a couple of months ago um just about everyone involved you know at
the coalface of regent honey conservation trying to to work out what can we do
to get serious about about about helping this bird uh and you know it was even considered
that we we might actually have to get someone out at a regent honey at a nest to shoot any any any car alongs that
come in to try and take off with with the chicks uh that image there is actually taken in the lower hunter uh when we're doing
some nausea minor controls and i'll i'll talk about noisy minor controls in in a minute
so just jumping to the captive breeding and release so we now breed regent honey it is in zoos
for two reasons one is so the the bird doesn't go extinct
full stop so we at least have birds in in captivity uh but moreover the the most important thing is to supplement
the wild population uh with zoobred birds every so often and there are now some some new avery's in
the central west out at dumbo at a dubbo at taronga western plains
just a photo there of of the birds um at dubbo so until recently just about all of the
releases had happened in in chilton in victoria and the theory there was that by releasing birds at the edge of the
range it would sort of sort of you know like a like a door we would maintain the population at the edge but
recently the recovery team decided to uh release birds into the core of their range so uh in in new south wales
and so far there's only been two new south wales releases um apart from a very early one back in 2000 in the
capity both of those have happened in the hunter valley so the chilton experience
has been very positive so we've had captive pears breed and successfully um
raise young in the wild and even more exciting is that sorry i
should have mentioned that yeah even more exciting is that captive birds have bred with wild birds as well so that's
that's it's when you do stuff like this you're kind of playing god you don't know if it's going to work but it so far it
seems it seems to have worked so just jump into recent releases in new
south wales so the 2020 release that we did at a place called quarrel belong was only a very small release of of 20 birds
uh and that actually the release site is down here somewhere and it was a hell of a task for the guys
that were monitoring the birds they had to cover a lot of ground because the birds did tend to wander very very widely
and it wasn't the most successful release we know that 8 out of the 20 birds did actually die
from the monitoring that we did on the other hand we conducted a release last year in a place called the tamale
woodlands south of curry curry just west of newcastle um that was an incredibly successful
release uh it's a known regent honeyeater breeding site in fact it's
probably the most important single site for regents in in in contemporary times
and this image here shows a smoking ceremony we were welcomed
by by the wanna rule people because we were doing the release on land owned by minda river local aboriginal land
council and uncle richard he welcomed us uh to the release site uh in wanna
language and it's thought that that was the first time that one arua language had been
spoken to a group of a gathering of people for over 150 years on that on that country so
it it's added a whole new layer to you know releasing regent honeyeaters
doing it on aboriginal owned land and yeah so there are actually you know
parallels as well so the regent honeyed uh people might be familiar with
the media that came out last year it's the regent honeydew has almost become famous as the bird that lost its song
uh and similarly the the wanna ru people uh they have almost lost their language
and they are in the process of reawakening their language so while we're also working with taronga and anu
to try and resurrect or maintain the song of the bird we were able to release birds on on on modern rural country and
so that these incredible parallels happened and i would actually i would recommend um on youtube if you
go to the project or i can easily send the link through there's a four and a half minute article
featured on on the project in in march this year talking about last year's captive release
as i said it was very successful we only have evidence of just two birds out of 58 birds that were released um died
which is by far the most successful as far as survival is is concerned so far
and that's just me monitoring birds from a high point um getting signals for the
the radio transmitters that we that we fit to them um that's the tamalpan woodlands in there and these are all
records of wild regent honeyeaters and that's curry curry uh yeah this image here just shows that
the birds didn't really move far yeah we had a few wandering birds two birds
traveled together to visit a rehabilitated rehabilitated mine site of all places but they soon came back
but yeah it was um it was very satisfying to see that the birds really just stuck to the patch
of bush where we let them go and very excitingly we had uh one successful
breeding attempt by two zoo bred birds so this is a very precious little chick
uh and i was still still monitoring um this guy back in march um i knew where
where him and his his parents were roosting and they were actually roosting with wild birds we had
um evidence of wild birds and and zubre birds roosting together and we did have a lot of breeding
attempts by the zoo bred birds but unfortunately we had a lot of storms last year which
destroyed nests but at the same time these are very naive birds these these birds are out in the wild for their
first breeding season ever so you don't blame them for building pretty ordinary nests so with experience
these these birds um will get better uh but it was the first time that we actually had done a release in
springtime in the breeding season so it was really really positive to see that the birds just got got stuck into it as
soon as they came out of the out of the out of the tents really um and of course there were a number of wild birds uh
present in the timeline woodlands while we did um that release and we had at least seven evidence of seven
seven chicks uh footage from that and that's just another image of of our precious little zoo chick
um yeah so there it is again uh so at the same time
uh we we were also watching the wild birds and i guess this this here uh is and i've got some video
footage um of of this i think this may even be a screen grab but we went to to check a a nest of a wild
hair that we were watching um as the release was happening and it was i think it was the day after we
found the nest and we we went to the nest looked up and we couldn't see birds there but we could
hear we could hear a chick begging and here was a chick just flapping around on the ground
we couldn't find the other chick so presumably what had happened was that a raven or carawang had come into the nest
taken off with one of the chicks and the other chick had fallen out of the nest uh so yeah this is you know a really
good example of what we're up against we we spend a lot of time and money on this bird and
if we can't get them to breed uh you know or i guess another way of putting it is
all our work can be undone by one raven or one kara wong so it's it's a it's a real challenge
uh so we actually took that bird fortunately taronga were with us of course um because of the release and
that bird um that that chick because it would have died um that chick has gone to taronga and apparently is doing well
it's a it's a girl so yeah i guess a a good ending to that story
i'll just have some of that stuff from yesterday you might have to
whoever that is could you mute your microphone please so we don't hear a conversation
thank you okay so i'm just going to run through some of the other um recovery actions that we
do just just just quickly um the captive release is probably the biggest thing that we that we we do
really so one of the other things we do is covenanting so because most regent honey records
actually have come in recent years have come from private properties working with private land holders is is really
important so when we talk about covenanting that's actually securing um or conserving land in
perpetuity on on on private properties um and that's happened in a in a number of
landscapes this this image or these images here are from from the uh the caped valley uh and you
know we've actually managed to put covenants on properties where region honey it is have actually since since
bred which is really exciting and of course habitat restoration
has occurred uh there's a good image there of some pretty major um
large scale restoration in in northeast uh victoria and david mentioned that there's been
some habitat restoration occur in the central west as well and all that work i guess is that's a
that's a future that's a long-term investment things like the captive releases that that we do uh uh very short term uh
because regent honey it is may not have enough time um to use those tree plantings we need to get this species
through that bottleneck so that they can then use the the tree planting that we do today
so i'm going to talk about mistletoe uh for a few slides mr toe has become a bit of an obsession of mine because it's
such a fascinating plant um here's a couple of images of little laura cootes which are usually feeding on gum tree
blossom fitting in both noodle leaf and long flower mistletoe in that photo
it's also extremely important for regent honeyeaters so that again there's three different
species of mistletoe being used by bioregents and they also use the mistletoe when they're breeding
and last year at a place in the upper hunter along the merrywall river we actually had four
four nests four regent honeyed and s four separate pairs uh nesting about 300 metres of of river
frontage in um in in the shea oaks but they were feeding on on the mistletoe
very important and so that photo there is a bird sitting in a long flowered mistletoe in
the lower hunter woodlands um in the tomato woodlands in the lower hunter so one of the key threats to that area
is actually bushfires so this red polygon shows some very severe fires
that have occurred in the last five or six years and the yellow dots are regent honey at a record you can see that the
fires have overlapped um with those with the region honeydew habitat uh this image here just shows
the severity of the fires there were hot canopy fires um and there's a bird sitting in mistletoe in 2018
uh in an area that didn't burn uh but what happens with mistletoe is when it when it is burnt it is killed outright
whereas gum trees come back after fire mistletoe is just dead so
when mistletoe just disappears from a landscape when you when you get a canopy fire going through a forest
um it would take a very long time for the mistletoe to return because we need mistletoe birds and other things that
beat the mistletoe and deposit the seeds on the branches it would take literally i think 20 to 30
years before this forest would recover and the mistletoe would return so we thought we'd get ahead of the game
uh you know take take the mistletoe birds job out of his hands and actually pick
the muscle toe ourselves uh and and plant them up into the canopy of of these uh spotted gum trees
anyone can do this you know you can actually just pick mistletoe and plant it low down but we as
was shown in that last slide we actually engaged professional arborists to get the the seeds up into the canopy because
regent honey eaters won't use or they certainly wouldn't nest in a mistletoe clump that is very low down so we needed
to get the um mrtow into the canopy um and there's an arborist there and yeah
you can just make out an arborist there right at the top of that that that spotted gum and so far over the course
of a couple of seasons we've managed to plant 2 000 seeds and again that works been taking place
on land owned by mindy river aboriginal land council mistletoe also doesn't survive drought
very well um in the kaiperi valley uh along the kp river which was at one time
the nursery ground for the regent honeyeater um just about every single lucito clump
died during the drought uh so we've also been out planting mistletoe seeds into the river she oaks in the kp valley
so yeah this is really a really novel approach to habitat restoration
when we think about re-veg we think about planting trees but you know we're sort of thinking outside
of the box and actually planting mistletoe one of the other things that we do is remove noisy miners from regent
honeyeater breeding sites i think it's no secret that nausea miners are actually a major
problem for woodland birds they will drive other birds away and of course they have proliferated across the
landscape they are now artificially common uh or abundant um so they are actually a major problem
and they act they they will occupy places where regent honeyeaters will try to breed
and they are listed as a key threatening process at just about every level so the science
is in nausea minors are a problem so what do we do well it's more broadly it's a very
difficult issue to tackle but for regents uh we go in and we actually remove
nausea miners from the breeding sites by shooting them and it's done both proactively and
reactively so proactively is going in before a breeding season to remove birds and reactively is
um for example in 2017 ross found some regent honey it is trying to breed in
bogey tsr in the caped valley and he gave us a call and said guys we've got some uh nausea miners giving the region
honey it is a hard time what can you do so we we went in and we removed those miners and that was actually
the most successful site for regents in that particular season so this is really important work um
that we're doing to to help regents um breed successfully an exciting opportunity came along
during the captive release so the technology is such now that we can actually put satellite tags satellite
transmitters on a bird as small as a regent honeyeater normally this has been in the domain of
of larger birds such as shorebirds and and seabirds but there are some transmitters that are
small enough to be fitted to a large male regent honey at it so
in december and and then again in february we were able to actually capture
three regent honeyeaters we they were all ex-zoo bred birds we did
actually catch a couple of wild birds as well but the wild birds were unfortunately weren't heavy enough to to
take the satellite transmitters so there's a photo of a very proud dean inglison who's the recovery coordinator
for regent honeyeaters with a region wearing a satellite transmitter
unfortunately we haven't had a lot of data from those transmitters um in the meantime but but we are working on that
so how you can help first of all by reporting all sightings that's a very
uh very important thing that that the public can do and we really need to know about any regent honey in a record in
real time so i'm going to finish the talk just glancing at the time by talking
about how to recognize and identify regents i like to think that they're reasonably
distinct they've got this beautiful black and gold plumage um fully black head with that that sort
of warty bare skin around the eye beautiful black tar with um some black and yellow tail
um completely yellow underneath uh a bit smaller than the nausea minor so they are actually
the the the species that we get uh reported to us that are most often confused with the regent honey are
things like the new holland honeyeater so these there are a number of small honey eaters in australia that are
roughly the size of a sparrow then you've got a noisy minor regents are somewhere in between uh they're what we
call a medium-sized honeyeater so they're a bit bigger than say yellow faced or another small honey
eater that people might be familiar with but a bit smaller than a noisy minor we've got a number of identification
guides available online and i'm pretty sure that you guys at central west would have uh printed
copies at your offices that you could get to anyone who's interested so just quickly finishing with um
tips on finding regent honeyeaters first of all of course you've got to go to to the right habitat so we spoke about the
grassy watt box and the box ironbark woodlands before then it's it's it's all about finding
blossom generally speaking if you go to a forest and there's no eucalypt blossom you've got very little chance of of
finding regent honey it is because they're probably elsewhere in a different part of the country where
there's blossom uh then what i i tend to do is i i listen for
uh your birds that are indicative of a really good um blossom event or or
nectar yields so things like little lorikeets
the chances are they're blossoming around so continue on on your way and yeah
you're always looking for for things like white-naped honey there's things that regent honey it is ten percent
and what i do is once i've once i find a tree that's got good blossom
uh particularly large trees i i like to try and work out the demographics of that blossoming tree so
i just get my eye in for what's happening in that tree and often you'll have the larger honey it is at the top
and they're quite aggressive and you'll have all the small honey it is darting around trying to get at the blossom and
the the the larger honey it is will will chase the smaller ones away what you're looking for is a a
honeyeater that's sort of between the sizes of those um of those honeyeaters
uh and yeah so there's not many honey eaters that actually are the size of a region so if you see a medium-sized
honey that you you you could be you could be in luck uh they're also quite attracted to water sources particularly
in the afternoon as with any forest bird uh the most important thing probably isn't
recognizing what they look like but recognizing what they sound like so i'm just going to play
the call of a regent honey into here
so it's a bit of a soft chuckle core inside
the classic trait of a regent honey as it collapses bill excitedly um
uh just be patient um stick around you may not if there's a regent honey around it may not be obvious for the first few
minutes uh and we do say to people look if you think it's worthwhile by all means play a call to see if you can
bring a bird in uh but just don't do that if you suspect they might be breeding or if you know if you're near a
busy road or something where you might be dangering the bird so i'll leave it there with only seven minutes to spare
um for for questions so yeah thanks everyone for for listening
thank you mick that was really really interesting i'm really excited to um to
get out and see what i can hear um so we might start off there has been a
question from rosemary who has asked how long until the noisy miners return to
areas where they have been removed and she's also asked what is their migration pattern do they come to new
south wales from victoria yeah okay so i'll start with the the
second question uh which is a really good one we we've got a reasonable idea um
that well we know that regent honeys will will move long distances in fact we have had uh abandoned birds uh arrive
600 kilometers from where they were banded uh but what we don't know is if there's any sort of regular pattern to
it uh we're reasonably confident that they they wander they they are
constantly looking for the best patches of of blossom and i think that that is
actually a factor that has contributed to to their decline is the fact that because we've lost so much habitat all
of these corridors and all the areas where they used to travel through looking for the best patches are effectively gone
so because they don't have a like a dedicated north-south east-west
movement um yeah that's potentially um been to the un undoing but yes they they
definitely do move between um between areas in fact they they really stay in the one spot for for very
long and on the noisy minor thing it actually depends on the landscape
that you're doing the removal so what we've found is uh that in in
fragmented landscapes such as the kp valley where we've been doing nausea minor removal for quite some time
the miners do return reasonably quickly back to that that area because
when you think about it it doesn't take long for the nausea miners on the periphery of where you've done your removals that
will just slowly move back in uh and you know other institutions have
done research on this and they've actually found that that the miners can be back within a few days uh so
we're actually quite strategic about that where we do our minor removal and ross at anu has done quite a bit of
research on that and not surprisingly we found that it's those linear patches such as
places like the winning valley where it's a it's a creek line hemmed in by sandstone and once you remove those
miners from that corridor there's not much opportunity for miners to move back in because they don't occupy the
sandstone country so it's a very big task to try and remove miners but i
guess each season when we're doing it we're giving whatever pairs arrive at a site we're giving them a bit of a head
start i suppose and mick libby has asked are indian miners a problem also for regents
no no so indian miners really don't well at present anyway they don't really
intersect with with regent honeyeaters they they are probably in some landscapes as the miners uh actually
marching further west they they might actually be occupying the same environments but they have
completely different habitat niches and it's it's more that the it's
more than nectar feeding birds and and also because the miners don't build you know the
common miners the indian miners don't build a stick nest like a region their their ecology is is quite different so
yeah it's it's really the the native uh noisy miner that that
is the problem and yeah it's i do feel sorry for the noisy minor
because it's not its fault it's our fault we we have created the perfect environment
for nausea minors to explode basically but but now that they're a problem we just need to do something about it
yeah fair enough and uh linda has asked well she's said that she has mistletoe
she's in the central tablelands and she's asked when is the best time to harvest
great question um this is yeah we're really trying to to increase the awareness of mistletoe and at the same
time dispel myths that mistletoes um kill trees because because they they don't i mean they will but only when a
tree is already highly stressed so thinking about actually
uh planting mistletoes it's something that we're still in the early
days of of doing uh we've only been planting for um three seasons
uh but what we have found with the mistletoe down around cessnock is that you've got a reasonably short short
window for two reasons one because the the fruit itself
will will drop and it's only sort of viable for a short period you do what i call
what others call the the avocado test just get a bit of a squeeze if it's nice and soft um then it's then it's ready
yeah different mistletoes uh you know would have different you know you better
tell different ways whether or not the outside whether the fruity section is soft i'm not sure but for the long
flowered mistletoe at least you just got to test to see how hard it is the other reason is that
we find that birds and things take off with our fruit so the mistletoe birds are out there
busily gobbling them down so for the box mistletoe at your way which
would be and the noodle leaf mistletoe both of those would be fruiting uh sort of late spring i guess well the
the the noodle leaf will be late spring but the box mistletoe because it flowers over summer it would be fruiting around
march april so yeah i'd be looking out for for mistletoe fruit any time from about say
november through to to february depending on the mistletoe that you have
excellent thank you mick now we don't have a lot of time left libby has just
asked another question and i think that we also have um another quick survey if
possible um but she has just asked do you leave the mistletoe seed to dry or do you squeeze it and then locate
onto other trees really really good question um because you you
you simply cannot store mistletoe it's almost it's almost a matter of
picking it and planting it uh david watson has told us that you can store them in the fridge for a couple of weeks
or whatever but we haven't had much luck with that so yeah so don't don't try and dry them out don't prepare them as soon
as you you pick a fruit and you can squeeze it out it's ready and and it's so easy because it is so sticky that
you'll actually have to scrape the thing off your finger when you wipe it on the underside of a branch so it's actually
something that kids you know i've had my kids out doing it with me they they love it it's a novelty it's it's it's good
fun so yeah right and so now libby would you like to jump on and do your um
survey post webinar sure i'm just going to quickly ask one more question if that's if that's
allowed jackie is um so cooler is one of the sort of more important areas around
the central west for um potentially regent honeyeater habitat
and there's lots of wind farms that are going in there so and are regions affected they fly that
high i mean some of these turbines are really really tall and really wide now is that going to make an impact you
think or probably not i mean the the landscape
the landscapes where wind farms are establishing aren't really those that the regent and honey eaters would use now now that there's so
few of them 100 years ago if we were doing this you know i would have maybe said yeah mate yeah
yes but but these days they're probably less likely to to move through those really high
highly fragmented landscapes where these are going yeah okay all right now look that's that's
that's really good um i hadn't even really considered that they're not going to be putting wind farms down gullies
and and all of that sort of thing yeah that's great and in wooded areas yeah yeah
thanks mick it's been um it's it's been fascinating now i'm just going to do this very quick post webinar
survey questions for everyone so if you can just go back into the chat please
the questions are very similar and if you could just put up now
post at the top of your chat and question one is how confident are you
now of being able to identify the regent honeyeater by its call
or feeding habitat and markings so um it's a beautiful call it's absolutely gorgeous i did i did have to
rush through that last bit but um i should mention that the call is available on on our website
so if you navigate to uh if you just google regent honey to bird life you'll find our woodland birds
website and there is actually an mp3 file that you can play the call fantastic thanks mick so just with that
question one uh we're on the same parameters one you strongly disagree five you strongly agree that you feel
more confident now after the webinar that you could identify a regent honey if you're very
lucky enough to see one in the wild question two
how well now do you understand the threats that are causing the decline in the numbers of regent honeyeaters
again the same parameters one to five put that into the chat for us that would
be fabulous
and question three how confident are you in understanding
what management actions might be achievable to help slow the decline in regions so mix mentioned a
couple of those with missile dynamic i just wanted to ask do you send your children up to the tops of canopies in
trees to just stick the mistletoe underside
uh sorry that's quick yeah i just realized i was muted um no no not yet they're only nine and six but
give them a couple of things from today but they they they love um collecting because um funnily enough there's
actually some rest areas here on the hunter expressway that have spotted gums and somehow there's a lot of low down um
mistletoe and the kids love just walking around the car park and picking the fruits yeah
it's not often you see a lot of low-hanging mistletoe it's often you know quite a bit higher which which
obviously is a is an issue so hopefully um linda when you're when you're doing your mistletoe um distribution that
you're not climbing to the tops of trees and question four uh then we'll finish is um
having listened to the webinar today will you look at making any changes to um either the management that you might do
on farm and in particular about the importance of mistletoe which is just critical for so many birds but
particularly the regent honeyeater so again would you look at making any changes now
with the knowledge that that you have received today or be happy to you know talk to other people about it as well
and again the same parameters if you can just put those in the chat and post those yep i was just going to
say libby just just while people are answering that um it's worth you guys knowing that we
actually have dedicated talks uh to the whole mistletoe thing uh and i think as
we speak there's been a media release uh go out from from northwest and yeah so
we are getting on the front foot with with this whole mistletoe story and you know i did like it was only a very small
part of my talk then uh but it'd be great one day uh one of us can come back
and give you guys a talk about about mistletoe and yeah give give more context to about it
i agree mick i think it's really important and i was lucky enough to go to one of david welsh's welsh walsh
walsh's um oh watson sorry whoops that's a bit bad um
uh talks in marywar about um you know uh last year and it was fascinating i had
no idea so and i'm i'm sprouting that whenever i go and see land holders and let them know how important mistletoe is
for all sorts of birds particularly regions um jackie did you want to come back on and just um finish things off for us
yep absolutely i just want to thank everybody so much for taking your time uh on your friday uh to sit in and
listen with us um and to mick thank you so much we really do appreciate your expertise and your
knowledge um and sharing with us all that you know i think that if anybody
has any questions um following this webinar if anything occurs to you please
reach out to david you should all have his email address he sent you the registration link for the webinar
and unless anyone has anything else to say we might finish up for the day

[Music]
in recent years there has been an interest in Native pasture as a result of the improved rainfall this has led to
an abundance of native pasture regeneration and improved ground cover landholders are eager to be able to
identify these plant species and learn about their nutritional value and palatability
a field day and Farm Walk was held at Wayne and N Chappy's property near
Summerton where landholders had the opportunity to learn about characteristics to help identify plants
and were able to take a close look at many of the species present as well as take a walk through the paddock and
learn how to identify them today we're in the paddock at Wayne and Nel's place
at summon we're having a a native pasture ID day it's being hosted by the
Baba Galan 100 land Care Group and there's been a really big interest in Native grasses particularly with the
really good rainfall we had towards the end of last year and the prolific growth
and we've actually been getting probably two or three um people at the counter or phone calls or texts each week with
people wanting to know what the native grasses are because we're really seeing some of the natives come through that we
haven't seen for many years particularly because of the the cool cooler summer the cooler season the really good
rainfall and it's great to see people um taking some interest in what's in their padic we often you know look at our
livestock we often try and manage the soils but it's really important to actually have a look at what our pasture
base is because from a livestock perspective this is what we're really growing we're growing pastures or
grasses which is then predominantly for the feed for our livestock so so knowing what you've got um the palet
whether it's desirable or less desirable um the nutritional value is really important so today we've got about 35
landholders here we've been hearing from Mitch Whitten from BCT who's been able
to talk about the various plant structures um some of the identifying features and Sally Bal main just had a
session on the livestock side of it so talking a little bit about the nutritional value of these
grasses we're just going to head off up the paddock soon but it's it's really good to see um the
interest people have also brought along some of their own pastures for us to identify and just the in increasing
interest in in Native grasses um in the in this last
season thanks for having me everyone thanks for the invite and thanks to Wayne and Nell for having us as Wayne
mentioned this is somewhat of a reunion for he and I 12 years ago touth high
school he in for me that 2 years after I left he also left ass so assuming there
was no reason to go on after I left that school so here we are yeah correlation
anyway so yeah Mitch Whitten um I work for the biodiversity conservation trust
based in ganada um I've spent about 7 years doing this sort of General thing
work with George and S at um at LLS for for three and a bit years before moving
over here um a little bit about myself I'm from gy if anyone knows where that
is part of the old gagano station originally so off the land out there um
the the business I work for BCT we estate government organization similar
to local Land Services uh in a nutshell what we do is work with landh holders
who want to establish uh private land conservation agreements uh on their
property and there's certain funding and other opportunities that can go with
that so if anyone's interested in in that sort of thing I've got a few business cards here um and yeah we can
have a chat uh at lunch um so what I'm going to go through
today uh is how to identify grasses so I
think we can probably all agree they're one of the hardest things to identify eucalyp are pretty hard acaas
are even worse and these guys are top of the list the main reason being is
they're basically impossible to identify uh for big portions of the year
so to get a proper ID we really need the reproductive organs of the grass um it's
not always the case there are some species which will have a key um defining feature something about the
leaf or the roots that're really unique to it um but it's quite rare so I'd be hesitant to um ID anything that isn't
actually in flow in full flight sort of thing so an example of something that
you could ID without um the the flower head is something like orless barnyard
grass if anyone knows what that is it's a it's a grass of sheep yards and that sort of thing and the leaf has a really
prominent purple stripe on it can't miss it little low growing thing so there are
a few exceptions to to this rule such as that but generally we want that you know big uh big open flower head um so we're
going to go through some of the the more common species which we've got with us here today which is great um I'm going
to outline the structure of grasses what they all share in common and how they're
different and that can really help us nut out exactly what we're looking at so before we get started we really need
some good resources we can't just look at something and off the top of our head know what it is otherwise we wouldn't
have this day today so um this one here is the absolute
Bible I would probably not recommend it to your average Joe because it is uh
what would you say legal e PL e it's it's got everything in it so it's great
if you're really keen and want to nut everything down to species so um while
Wy um from un's one of the big authors I don't know if anyone knows W he's like
the Don Bradman of grasses is what I like to call him he's an absolute Legend
um this little book here common plants of grazing pastures in the low Ando flood plane this is a cracking little
book it's got a handful of the grasses and um some of the herbs and Forbes as
well um I think George we there may be some of these in the LLS office they're starting to go extinct but that's a good
one the best of all of them is this chap here so this is uh grasses of the New
South Wales slopes and adjacent Plains this is probably the best book for identifying grasses for the purposes
that most of us need today so it doesn't have every grass in it but there are 450
grasses just on the slopes of New South Wales so this will nut it down to family
at least so this is a really good book um and I'll I'll be using it a bit today
to to help myself [Music] um so before we even start looking at a
grass we have to have a look at where we are in the landscape so just like the
plants in your garden or the things in a rainforest grasses like different Landscapes different environments some
like heavy uial some like sand some like Plains some like Rocky slopes some like
you know salty marshes so have a look around where are you because that can be a key defining feature um of that
particular grass basic example PLS grass which I think we've got here
today so this is a lover of heavy aluvial soils you're not going to find
it up on the top of some Rocky Hill somewhere um so it's a good way to be able to rule things out just by looking
at the landscape and having a bit of a read about what particular species like um we can have a look at things
like disturbance levels as well um certain species are EXT extremely
grazing sensitive and some are really tolerant to grazing so bamby Panic um it
is really tolerant to grazing it's sprad to be that way um we know it can handle it things like this lobed blue grass is
quite rare in the landscape its cousin red grass is quite common it can handle
grazing but this is one of those um sort of few natives it is actually quite leafy and it will get grazed out very
quickly so so if you're in a heavily grazed padic it's probably not going to be this so that's just something you can
you can rule off your list um so now we can get down to
actually looking at the specimens we've got first thing is it an annual grass or
is it a perennial grass now most people are probably going to know what all that means forgive me if I'm repeating things
you already know but I will run through it uh so annual grasses are those species which complete their full life
cycle within one season so all they want to do is stick a root out of that seed
get as few leaves as possible shoot up wave their genitals in the air and reproduce and then die and you know
that's the dream so one season they'll have that full life cycle prolific seeders and on and on they go um whereas
perennials they've got a bit more strategy of let's dig down here I like
it here we'll put down a big root system I will get nice and big I might not flour for a year or so but I'm here for
a long time so those different Life Strategies I suppose so the best way to
tell um is to actually have a good look at the root system so as I said annuals
quick growing um and as a result their root systems are generally not that extensive so if it's something you can
lay down and pull out of the ground with one hand say levered grass or something like that it's probably an annual you'll
know just from observations in your padic as to what species are coming and going and which ones are sticking around
um whereas perennials um they generally have a really extensive and deep root system and you're probably going to need
a mic to to dig them out so I think uh like cooler tide grass for example
you're not just going to land down and pull that out of the ground um so that's just a good way to tell the difference
um and also have a look at uh their growth form so when we're looking through these books and it talks about
the different grass is it'll talk about is it a tall tciic um like like a
kangaroo grass or is it um something that runs along the ground um and shoots
out of romes like cooch which is also here somewhere um also have a look at
other really people sometimes miss the obvious things like the color of the leaf some have a really distinctive
Bluey color uh to the leaf like your quinland blue grass um your native B
batsy um really really Bluey green and then you'll have things like Gat and panic which is that really vibrant green
color um so it sounds obvious but it's something a lot of people Miss is to just step back and have a look at at the
basic things um and one thing to be cautious
about is that everything I've just told you can differ for the one species
depending on the environment that it's in so if it's a particular particularly dry season for example it may not form a
big tall Tusk it might stay stunted for for years um recently I spent about half
an hour trying to identify a grass I thought I really had it wasn't sure and then later leared that that padic had
been sprayed with a hormonal herbicide and so the complete structure was all out of whack so knowing a bit about the
context and the environment is is really useful as well so what I'm going to run through
now is the exciting part we're actually going to get in and have a good close look at some of these grasses while they
may all look very different um they're not as complicated as they seem they all have the same uh unit of flower which is
called a spikelet and some of the features may vary but the structure will always be the same for all grasses so
what I'm going to do I'm going to run through all the different parts um I should said before if anyone has any questions feel free to raise your hand
and I can we can have a chat or we can just afterwards
so yes by anel that's right yeah so yeah
they're those yeah in between ones yeah if it's a particularly good season they might live for you know three or four
years sometimes but in a normal year they may only live once so yeah yep that's right um just like in your garden
for example normally a tomato might only grow for the summer but if you've got it growing up against a nice hot shed a
particular area you know it'll keep producing so it's that same sort of concept um okay so the flower head first
we start off with a little stem at the bottom this can be so tiny that it's
non-existent sometimes it can be quite
pronounced next thing we have is a structure called the glooms which is a
fun word and the blooms are basically an empty Brack that sits at the bottom of
that flower spikelet so think of say a a rose bud before it opens it has that
green outer layer this is a bit like that it sort of encloses the the flower
head of that grass and what you'll have is what they call a lower Gloom and an upper Gloom so one will sort of start
before the other on this little stem um and I'll get into the variations of these um a bit later
so the next thing we have and excuse my terrible drawing is a floret so this little guy
um is actually made up of a few components which I'll get into and this actually houses um the flow so it itself
I'll pretend this is a a magnified version of the Flor it itself is made up of a very
similar structure to the glooms and it's called a LMA and a Pia
so we've got one named for these ones down here and two up here just to make it hard for everyone so Lemma and the
Pia and actually inside here sits the ovary which is what this
the grain or the seed will form we have the stigma that come off
here these are the the female parts that collect the pollen and then we have the male parts the anthers that will come
off like that so all those reproductive organs are housed here I might label them
actually right so we've got our gloom and our flet inside our flet we've got
all the reproductive organs so then inside this lit we
can have more of these flits which will have
the same structure same reproductive organs inside something like this so
this is probably starting to look familiar to people this is really obvious on something like uh prairie
grass is probably the best one it it sort of looks it's nice and big you can see all these things now for some
grasses they have a pre determined number that can grow here it might only be one or two some can be all the way up
to 25 seeds all up in here and for some species like your love grasses the
number will just be determined on the season so your padic GL grasses they can
if it's a poor season they might only have the resources to grow seven of these individual florets in here where
it's if a good season they might get so many that it ends up you know drooping over they might get 25 o in there so
it's really um season dependent any grain Growers will sort of sympathize
with that and so this is the basic structure for all these grasses and what we can
have is uh different structures um that are really key
defining features for a lot of these so some will have some hairs off the base
here some will have some fine hairs on the glooms um your Pas balms they've got
these nice Stripes here on the flits some species have what's called a keel that runs along the back like the bottom
of a yacht you know so um what else some have a little gland down the bottom here
so there is huge variation just within that part of the grass alone and and
really you're going to need a hand lens to be seeing this stuff um but that just you know the structure is always the
same just with those variations inside um okay so moving on let's see if
this actually rubs oh jeez it does rub out that never happens so now we've sused out that base
unit and I'll I'll try show you an example of some of these so this is a one of the Native love
grasses we'll pass a few
around so that dark part on this stem that is the individual uh floret uh
sorry individual spikelet so if you look really close you can see the
glooms at the bottom just pass them around and we can have a look later so you see those two glooms
at the bottom and the the rest of it forming above so the next thing we're going to talk about is the actual
structure of the flower head itself and it's normally the most obvious thing for
then nutting out what species it is uh this little book is an absolute cracker
because I if you can see it's colorcoded on the pages there and it's it breaks
down all the species in here depending on the flower head type so if you can
get one and go oh yes um I know that's a panicle then you just go to the panicle
part and you can flick through and you've ruled out a whole stack of grasses so there's uh five um five main
types and I'll quickly run through all of them and show you an example of what they all look like so the most basic one
is called a spike and my notes are getting away
[Applause] so a spike is a single it's called a rim
we can call it a branch whatever you want but all those flits we talked about they will grow directly off
that Spike or off that Branch there so we have an example
here this is buffal grass it's good or bad depending on who you ask
but as you can see on it might be a bit hard to see come and have a look a bit later all those individual fls are
growing straight up against that stem and you can see for this particular species they're really clustered in
against that stem there'll be ones like Ry grass where they're actually a lot more spread out something so this next
one is called a primary axis of
rims which is not dissimilar to our Spike except for one feature which is it
will have branches that come off it like this
and then that is where our little florets will live off there so the example we've got here for that and that
might look familiar to people as uh P balum it's probably the most obvious
one which is here so here you can see we've got this
one Spike and then off it we've got these branches and those individual florets
those flower heads we talked about before growing directly off those branches so that's called a primary axis
of rims the next one is uh is one step up
so we've got our main stem we've got some
branches and we've also got some extra branches coming off as well and it's off those second and third
and fourth branch is that our fls will actually grow so that's things this is probably
the most common one we've got um we've got Plains grass here um we've got all
of our love grasses all grow like that one thing to be careful of is while this
is sort of the most um common one you probably see sometimes these branches
are pressed flat up against that primary uh that primary stem that runs up there
um so here's an example so oh some of the arisers are a bit like
that we don't have one that's a really good example but this is what's called a closed Pentacle so when you read about
it it will say yes it's a pentacle and they can range from open to closed and
what you'll need to do is when you get your flower head you really need to you know pull it apart and have a good look
and see how many layers of branching there are a good way is to get it and actually Bend it over and you see I've
done that this little Branch here has stuck up so when I look at that I can actually see those extra layers of
branching in there so while that might look like one Spike with the the florit coming off it it is actually a
multi-branched um species in
there um so the next one uh is digitate um Premier digits a good one windmill
grass so digit we've got our our same uh spikelet oh sorry our same um stem that
will come up and then we've got branches but they're all coming off a single
point generally on the top like that um I'll use this example so yeah our
windmill grass here these are getting on a bit but you can see there's our stem and then we've
got our branches that are coming straight off from that Center Point um um another interesting example
is these both Clowers these these blue grasses um Queensland Blue Grass or D
canthium they're the same again a bit like our our panicle they can come in an open form like that or they can spend
most of their life pretty much closed up like that so you've really got to get in and start pulling them apart to see
what's what's going on so for these guys then the little flits will grow you know
straight off those those secondary branches you can also get get um grasses that are sub digitate and the the uh
Premier digits a good example of that is where most of the uh stems will come off
that single point but sometimes they will have um a secondary Point as well a
bit like the spokes on a bicycle so it can range from this digitate with you
know just one on top or sub digitate where we've got this multi-branching happening underneath as
well the the rarest of all the grasses there's only a handful H rare is in the
type they're quite abundant as kolai is um it's called a Spate and so a Spate is
its own sort of special one where we've got our um our stem here we've got some
branches coming off it um then we've got our flet and then on the
flet there is a little leaf-like structure called a spathe that's where they get Spate from caller grass it has
those two flits that everyone will be familiar with I remember it cuz it's like it's giv you the that's how I
remember it it's yeah and uh it if you have a really close look at it in that structure will actually have a little
leaf there called a called a Spath um kangaroo grass it falls into that category as well so if we have a close
look there's actually a tiny little leaf leaf that exists in that um in that
structure there so there's not many um so your themers have it uh cooler TI
grass the introduced one um your Simba pogens which is your Barbed Wire Grass
um it falls into that category as well so it's a good example of where you really need to um to get in open open
those seed heads up with your fingers and have a
look and that is pretty much all I was going to talk about today um I hope
you've learned something those resources that the georgees handed out um are very
good again I couldn't more highly recommend um getting this book it is
available online at the toal college website so this was written by Harry
Rose um he's another grass Guru um and as I said before the the beauty of this
book is it it organizes itself um based on those flower head types so before you
even start having a close look at the Flor you can just go okay that's uh there's two layers of branching there
that must be a pentacle and you just go straight to that section and you can just flick through till you find it so
um yeah that's pretty much it for me so I'm s Bain I'm the livestock officer with the A Team I work with George um
home is halfway between Binger and barber um and I work out of the warala office for the most part of the time and
I'm my big caveat is my plant ID skills are so par it's not funny but there's
lots of tricks you can get away with when we talk about palatability um from these and it's mainly just
feeling them so I like I was saying to Mitch earlier like the um I really
struggled I hadn't heard of and I really struggled to find any literature on the
LED Blue Grass um and I didn't know why MIT was saying
like it's generally grazed out it's quite rare to find and I can see why like it's beautiful
soft um it's got really nice like quite wide soft leaves so it's it's going to
be palatable um and even though it's in um sort of sence it's it's gone
reproductive it's still not Savage like if I compare it to something like he was
saying it's quite closely related to the red grass like if I compare it to my red
grass it's a lot
[Music] sparkierdust animals will perform better
on but not always I suppose um the other thing is generally
most things are really palatable when they're young um even the rolly
poly like it hasn't actually got that spiky and hard yet so it will be
palatable but then as soon as it starts to get sharp things are going to stop
eating it um as far far as performance goes um
you know this guy being I suppose a little bit more introduced I suppose we call him he's sort of up there the digit
um big beautiful broad leaves um so going to get a lot more
performance out of that then you will something that is still palatable so
like our Plains grass it's starting to be past like if I
feeling now like it is starting to get quite spiky but also my leaf is so thin
and minimal I'm never going to see the level of performance out of it cuz it just doesn't
contain um contains a lot of fiber which isn't sugar and energy and things that are going to make us do if that makes
sense um
the goose foot um um I had to Google it sorry but
yeah highly palatable and also quite nutritious the protein when they tested it came back really high which is like a
little bit surprising looking at him cuz he's not particularly leafy but the seed
head's still quite soft I suppose um and not ored that's the other thing sheep in
particular they can't deal with horns it spikes their eyes gets in their wool
gets berries into their skin and things like that so they won't eat it um our
friend cool Tha grass palatable young we can force stock to eat it later
particularly cattle but they will need a protein supplement to get through it I
suppose um too much fiber in the system the bugs don't have enough protein to
build up numbers themselves um so everything slows down and then the
animals are restricted by capacity which means they just can't eat enough in a day unless we give them some help like
spraying molasses on cooler TI grass or any dry standing feed so molasses is
sugar and I mean who doesn't love sugar it will increase its palatability but
the downside to molasses is there's no protein in it is just sugar so whilst it
makes it tastier the Molasses doesn't really do a lot to help them
digest the cooler Tha grass we still need a protein supplement to feed the bugs okay so yeah it'll to a certain
extent it'll increase their intake of it but then they still can't become constrained by that physical F capacity
and the fact that it's quite hard to digest so they if the bug numbers aren't
functioning well enough they rely on C chewing so they spend so much time
spitting it up trying to reduce particle size so that can pass through um that
they just can't eat to their require if that makes sense so like if we think about us whilst Fiber speeds up passage
in our digestive system does the opposite to ruminants so it slows them slows them
down sorry Fe yes
then Absolut absolutely
and they'll turn into protein yes and then
youing away y so the Ura makes more bugs which then help Chow through the poorly
digested feed um and then as those bugs die and pass through the rest of the
digestive system they're the protein that feeds the animal bug uh so the microbiota in um so it's a
combination of bacteria protozoa
any more questions um yes anyx yes good point nice lead yes there
are um stink grass is particularly toxic to horses generally because of the stink
there's a a bit of an aversion to it um Rin its handle it a little bit better
than the ne wines um but it's toxic even things like your um Pas palum at
certain times can be toxic it's prone to getting a I can't see the Pas palum
sample but it's prone it can be prone to getting a bit of an Urgot in the seed
head which can lead to you might have like Pas palum staggers they call it Ry grass can do the same thing Ry grass
staggers um some of our other ones even Bambi panic
a monoculture of it so we lost couple of years ago we lost a lot of sheep out
near weall um that were predominantly grazing bamb batsy it's sort of they
were fine on it then there was a rain event and then I think out of about 140
heads something like 90 died um so we can have some
issues um some of our more
stemer ones um and anything actually to be honest nitrate poisoning can be a real
issue at the starts even good old oats can can lead to nitrate poisoning we've seen that basically what happens is the
plant uptakes a heap of nitrogen to to grow in the form of nitrate and if it's
consumed by The Animals before the plant gets a chance to use it up um it it's
toxic stops the um body from being able to carry blood so it's fatal uh sorry
stops the blood from being able to carry oxygen so it's um
fatal um this guy he's pretty toxic um
he contains an alkaloid and look generally stock don't eat the purple top that much that's why you see it left um
most of these things unless we force them to eat it will have a natural
aversion things like alkaloids and stuff like that they generally do have a taste to them um goats goats grazing purple
top when it's still young um goats can sometimes be a little bit more tolerant
to alkaloids and tannin and things like that um than sheep and
cattle like not extensively more tolerant but sometimes be a little bit more tolerant um and I think I think
with a lot of those things it's a matter of diet selection
like availability um if there's lots else that's more favorable they'll
probably take that first um and sometimes it can be learned thing so sometimes so things like rock Fern
there's a real learnt a real learned behavior in not eating it um and we
actually really lost that um during the draft for a couple years where we didn't see it and then when the rock Fern came
back the few older stock that remained knew not to eat it but then younger
stock that grazing was actually quite novel to they ate it and it had
ramifications so look no it's cuz it's not the do bigheaded big heading horses
in all sea Force actually presents a real issue so even horses running on cooch kouu things like that have a um
risk of getting bige head so um oxalates a lot of the those plants produce
oxalates ruminants are pretty good at dealing with oxalates they're pretty good at detoxifying them there are some
times when they do present a problem but with equines what we see is the oxalates
bind up the calcium and so the animals actually horses will actually start to become really calcium deficient and in
attempt to sort of restore that they're drawing calcium out of their bones and
it deforms the shape of their head um so supplementation calcium
supplementations really cuz you generally in a lot of cases you don't have anywhere else to put the horses um
so calcium supplementation on those is really really important calcium
supplementation on our natives um traditionally we would calcium supplement ruminants to avoid
milk fever and things like that tends not to be a as great a risk on our
Tropicals um and native PES as it does on our temperate and and winter cereals
are probably the worst for it the plants themselves naturally lack calcium and
they're also generally when we graze them really high in potassium and really high in protein so really high nitrogen
and those two things are antagonistic is the technical word but basically means
they hate on calcium and magnesium are the two um and so we run into
deficiencies there um particularly if we've got anything that's carving or lambing just because their calcium needs
increase with milk draw down um and so calcium supplementation on those crops
is really important look some people will blanket um calcium sodium is the
other one that tends to run hand inand with calcium um supplementation and
again that's because of the high levels of protein and high levels of potassium interfering and sodium there's a thing
called this potassium sodium pump which um makes the body work I suppose in
short um and so we need a certain amount of sodium in the system to to run the
other cool thing is most things eat salt and most things won't eat straight line by itself so it's cool that they get to
go hand inand traditionally UA was always the
cheapest now obviously U's taken a bit of a major escalation in price but what
makes UA the cheapest is when we um I suppose convert nitrogen to
protein um Ura comes in at 280% protein so it's huge bang for your
buck I'm not I don't advocate for the use of Ura in sheep sheep recycle
nitrogen a fair bit better than cattle do the downside to that is ill them a
fair bit better than it kills cattle so I don't love urea I as a general rule I
won't advocate for urea supplementation in sheep if you've got some old weathers or something like that maybe 2% uer in a
lick um but other than that it's mainly about what you can get bang Fe Buck wise
is where I sit on protein supplementation so um something like cotton seed meal 40 42% protein um
generally does cost double pke or something like that Palm kernel meal but
then Palm kernel Mill is only 20% protein so the Double's kind of worth it
um so yeah I'd advocate for affordability for protein
supplementation and yeah Ura and cattle traditionally like obviously it's gone
from what 400 bucks to 1,000 um but it's still probably quite you don't a little
bit goes such a long way um you just have to be careful um if you've got it
out I like loose lick rather than blocks um you get a bit more bang for your buck
um but if you're feeding it out it just can't be in in water so if you're feeding it out in troughs your troughs
have to be able to drain um cuz those puddles of water will be lethal do
you better bang for your buck in a block we have to put in things to make it a
block that so there's a large component of that that's not nutritionally contributing to the diet
um and the other thing with the block is they're what 50 bucks 40 50 bucks you don't get a lot if
we're chasing calcium supplementation say we want to give them however however many grams of calcium perhe per day
generally we can't get that out of a block or they have to consume a lot of a block to get that cuz too much calcium
in a block stops it from setting whereas in a loose lick we can bang it up as high as that leak eat it um and if we
put a loose lick out and they don't eat it we can tweak it yeah I'm there are
definitely some schools of thought out there that are all about free choice
supplementation I'm not um my personal experience is I've seen
them eat things until they die and I've also seen them so um phosphorus to fish
I most of my work prior to joining these guys was in Queensland and I've seen
cattle so phosphorus deficient a bit of a duck step in the
yard and they break their legs and we've struggled to get them to eat phosphorous supplement so I'm kind of a no on that
with the exception of salt they'll self-regulate salt um sulfur to a certain extent I've
seen them meat particularly over on the coast um and in some cases we do see C
eat bones or straight kind of phosphor phosphorus but then other Catt will turn
their nose up at it so you know like I've seen cows dying of milk fever that won't eat the cow simlick so I'm I'm not
I kind of think we know what they need and it's up to us to manipulate their
diet to do it the what I base my stuff on is there was a lady who did some studies on the equivalent IQ of horses
and she said that they um have the equivalent of about a sort of a
toddler um and so if we say calb you know maybe we'd give them a little bit
less down the chain depends where you sit on your eoin love but if we like if I say to my 2-year-old you choose
between broccoli or a biscuit she's picking the
biscuit um cuz it's palatability um so yeah I'm not a free
choice Advocate saying that though so in the drought I think just hunger got the
better of a lot of stock and so they ate whatever we put out um and the last
couple of years haven't been horrendous for metabolic issues either so I'm
pretty hawky about serial crops this year cuz I think it's going to be a really cold wet winter which I think is
going to see a lot more grass teety milk favor and stuff like that come through
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The purpose of the project was to restore habitat in areas that were previously home to the Duffy’s Forest ecological community. That community is the natural habitat for the threatened species Grevillea caleyi, which is critically endangered.

Having some of those natural features still intact gave us hope that we could restore these areas with assisted revegetation, primary weed removal, and bush regeneration efforts.

The fencing was important for a couple of reasons. The first was to protect remnant sites where we knew Grevillea caleyi was present and widespread. The second was to delineate and protect our new revegetation sites.

All the various stakeholders in this public area are aware of the site’s environmental significance, and the Council is committed to protecting it through these measures.