FoMM Newsletter – December 2024

End-of-the-Year Working Party Sunday 15 December 9am – noon

Give a hand at the last work party for this year hosted by the Friends of Mt Majura on Sunday, 15th December; help to remove Japanese Honeysuckle Lonicera japonica, Privets Ligustrum lucidum and L. sinense and other woody weeds from the drainage line close to the Hackett water tank; and see how planted local shrubs and wildflowers are slowly taking over.

Where: Meet at the water course close to the water tank off Rivett St / French St intersection, Hackett; it’s a lovely shady spot for a summer morning in the bush! Please come early for an introduction and give as much time as you can spare.

Bring and wear: Sun protection, long sleeves and pants, sturdy shoes and gloves if you have them.

For more information and a map of the location see here.

Mondays @ The Fair

Lately the Mondays @ The Fair group have been concentrating on attacking the priority weeds identified in the Weed Management Plan 2024-29 for The Fair. This Plan was developed with FoMM to help manage priority weeds at The Fair using funding from the Restoration program under the Conserving Canberra Budget 2023-2025.

The Mondays @ The Fair people have spread black builders’plastic sheeting over dense patches of Sweet Vernal Grass (SVG) Anthoxanthum odoratum as an experimental treatment which we hope will reduce the impact of this invasive species. More patches of SVG have been mapped recently in FieldMaps.

Volunteers digging out and bagging SVG plants from the area surrounding the dense patch in the gully, covered with black plastic to “cook” the weeds.

Photo courtesy of Canberra NatureMapr.

It’s also the season to tackle Serrated Tussock before the seed heads mature and blow away. So come join the Tussock Team on a Monday at 9:30 at the reserve entrance meeting place in North Watson at the car park in Ian Nicol Street. You will be most welcome to join the crew to help with the restoration of the endangered Grassy Box Woodland.

Twilight Weeding Resumes in January 2025

These summer evening sessions have been popular as people enjoy some relaxed summer time. Join us at The Fair site in North Watson from 6-7.30 pm on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday evenings from 7 January. We will be working in patches of dense wildflowers, hand-pulling St John’s Wort flowers from the plants before they set seed. Meet us at the nature park entrance at the corner of Tay and Ian Nicol Streets. In the cool of the early evening, when there are light breezes and sometimes stunning skies at sunset, it’s a very pleasant social activity.

Evening weeding in the wildflower patch in January 2022.  Photo by Ernestine Kirsch.

Nature Conservation Strategy (NCS) Review

“The ACT has a large body of policies, strategies and plans whose explicit aim is nature conservation. These include well over 100 action and management plans for species and communities, conservation strategies and advice, reserve management plans and Activities Declarations.”

From the State of the Environment Report (SOE23) prepared by Office of the Commissioner for Sustainability and the Environment.

The main legislation for nature in the ACT is the Nature Conservation Act 2014 (NCA) a more than 300 page monster, which was reviewed this year, but quite ineffectively. No truly independent review was done, and no substantial changes were made to address the known problems such as those detailed in the SOE23,and the NCA is still in force.

Now the NCS which sits beneath the NCA as a guide to conservation management is being reviewed. Another opportunity to improve things for nature here.  The team working on the NCS review indicates that the strategy can include changes to legislation.  The review has begun but will continue for some months and input is sought for all aspects of the strategy.

If you would like to be involved and get more information on the review, send an email to natureconservationpolicy@act.gov.au

Webinar: Fixing our Nature Laws

The Conservation Council ACT Region is discussing new legislation needed both federally and in the ACT on Tuesday 3 December, 6:30pm – 8pm.

See this site for more information.

Reports on Activities

Wiping out Woody Weeds near Valour Park on Sunday 17 November 2024

Most of the Sunday group with their tools gathered around a display of weeds from the gully area.  Photo by Max Pouwer.

Max Pouwer organized a display of the variety of weeds growing in the gully area close to the boundary of the reserve adjacent to Valour Park.  Quite a diverse collection!

We concentrated on the woody ones working from the western end of the gully and including the area between the gully and the boundary. Small Elms Ulmus were the main species at the western end, then there was an area where Desert Ash Fraxinus angustifolia trees were predominant, followed by Southern Blue Gums Eucalyptus globulus subsp. bicostata, kindly identified with pink ties by our rangers who are going to tackle some of the very large Blue Gums, much too large for volunteers with hand tools and dabbers.  Of course there were also some others, like Sweet Briars Rosa rubiginosa which pop up everywhere and the occasional Hawthorn Crataegus monogyna.

This distribution of tree species is a consequence of what is growing now in Valour Park, and the impact of previous weeding sessions in this area.  Blue Gum saplings have been repeatedly removed especially from the western end of the gully area. The same applies to Hawthorns, and the source Hawthorn trees in Valour Park were cut down some time ago, after lobbying from FoMM, although there are probably more young Hawthorns there now with no volunteers to cut and dab them. It would be illegal to do so under the Urban Forest Act 2023.

A volunteer tackling Blue Gum saplings growing in the gully near Valour Park. Photo by Barbara Read.

Majura Mountain Scouts Group:  Many Hands Make Light Work

On Tuesday evening, a large group of energetic, hard working Majura Scouts dug into two large heaps of mulch which they spread liberally over a large area of dead Chilean Needle Grass (CNG). They also watered small seedlings beside the now dry drainage channel near the Hackett Water tank. What they achieved in less than two hours would have taken much longer for Friends of Mt Majura to complete. This is part of a larger experiment across three different places (Majura, Ainslie and Namadgi NP), to determine if deep mulching to cover poisoned (and dry) CNG is an effective method of control.

Scouts hard at work spreading buckets of wood chip mulch on dead CNG near the Hackett tank. Photo by Jenni Marsh.

Have You Looked at the StoryMap?

Ten years of invasive plant control mapping 2013-2023 features FoMM’s work at the Fair as one example. This story comes from Steve Taylor, now retired from his position of Biosecurity Program Manager, and his colleagues. Megan Wyllie is Acting Manager Invasive Plants and Plant Pests for now.

Want to Identify Evil Grassy Weeds?

Here are links to help id three of them.

Serrated Tussock https://skfb.ly/oJuFC

African Lovegrass https://skfb.ly/oJBCZ

Chilean Needle Grass https://skfb.ly/oJ8T9

See also the ACT Weeds Manual for these three and lots of other weeds, with advice for control.

Want to Know about Nature Resources for the ACT?

See here for a list of books, websites, apps to help you find what you want to know.  Some of the books are in the ACT Library… and more could be if you put in a new book request. Maybe Santa could bring you one?

Cherry Ballart Exocarpos cupressiformis puts on its Christmas decorations in December.  This photo is by MAX from the Clancy’s track area in 2020.  Courtesy of CanberraNatureMapr.

Will the fruit display be so great this year?