A friend of Mount Majura on a nighttime ramble not far from the Hackett Tank. Our resident Wombat Vombatus ursinus not often seen because of his/her nocturnal habits.
Thanks to Steve Bittinger for this photo, courtesy of Canberra NatureMapr.
Interesting Plans for the Future
In the last little while FoMM has been interacting with ACT government naturalists who are developing a couple of projects for our reserve.
Hackett Horse Paddock Landscape Plan
Luke Doldissen, Biodiversity Projects Officer with ACT Natural Resource Management (NRM) which is part of the City and Environment Directorate, has sought our feedback on a draft plan for part of the current Hackett Horse Paddocks agistment area, shown in the map below. This plan has been prepared by Lori Gould and Rozie Higgs of Environmental Restoration Design and Planning. The plan is not finalised yet and there may be some adjustments to the boundaries but in effect the SE paddock shown in yellow in the map has been taken out of the horse agistment lease and returned to the Mount Majura Nature Reserve. The other three horse holding paddocks along Antill Street will remain leased for agistment. So watch this space as NRM organises fence realignment and plantings in areas which need to be rehabilitated.
Map of Mount Majura Reserve showing in yellow the approximate area of the rehabilitation project to be organised by NRM.
Cultural Burning Plots
Alison Mungoven from Canberra Nature Park – North has advised us the Bethany Dunne from the Office of Nature Conservation (ONC) is organising plots for First Nations cultural burning in autumn 2026. These have already been surveyed and marked out with white painted pickets and the areas are shown in the map below. Only one area will be burnt. It will not affect work such as weeding we can undertake in there, but we will just need to be careful to record what we do and pass it onto Bethany Dunne, who is leading this from ONC’s perspective.
Areas marked out between Clancy’s track and Oldfields Lane where a cultural burning will occur next autumn organised by the ONC.
Reports
These mulching reports by Waltraud Pix with photographs by Jenni Marsh.
Mulching Working Party Sunday 16 November
Volunteers spreading wood chip mulch in the gully around young establishing Tall Sedge plants.
Friends of Mount Majura (FoMM) host working parties in various parts of the Mt Majura nature reserve on the 3rd Sunday of each month. On the 16 November it was all hands on- deck to distribute mulch along and in the drainage gully near the Hackett water tank. The two tasks were mulching the new plantings of Tall Sedge (Carex appressa) at the bottom of the gully and Hardenbergia and Creeping Saltbush (Einadia nutans) planted along the gully slopes, as well as the previously poisoned Chilean Needle Grass (CNG) along the northern side of drainage line. The idea of placing mulch on top of the dead CNG is to suppress the germination of new seedlings from a vast soil seed bank, which is part of FoMM’s experiment to tackle this highly invasive species; for further information on this experiment visit this link. We also removed new privets and (hopefully) the last of the many blackberries that once occurred in the gully. The native raspberries planted over the past two years make for an excellent replacement for blackberries, providing food and shelter habitat. It was great to see new volunteers coming along to give a hand, including some residents living nearby. Well done.
A local resident shovelling wood chip mulch for spreading on dead Chilean Needle Grass.
Scouts’ Mulching Activity Tuesday 18 November
Majura Mountain Scouts scoop wood chips into buckets for spreading as mulch, as their shadows lengthen in the late afternoon light.
As the saying goes: many hands make light work. It was a perfect spring evening with a beautiful sunset on Tuesday 18 November when twenty Majura Mountain Scouts, some parents and scout leaders joined Friends of Mt Majura volunteers to help spread wood chip mulch at the project site in the nature reserve east of the Fair in North Watson. For more than ten years FoMM has been carrying out work to improve the 10 Ha degraded grassy woodland area. We found mulching a wonderful tool to improve soil conditions at compacted sites; mulch helps to keep up soil moisture levels, suppresses germination of weeds and holds native grass seeds in place that volunteers had broadcasted. The hard-working scouts flattened two large piles of mulch in 1.5 hours and still had enough energy for playing. Helicopter boy Clancy invented a new technique of spreading mulch by spinning around with the bucket full of wood chips. Many thanks to ParkCare ranger Marty for mulch delivery, Jenni for taking photos, Scouts leader Jen for organizing the event, the parents who gave their time and of course the Scouts for a job very well done.
Scout Clancy showing how he spreads mulch by spinning around like a helicopter!
Mondays @ the Fair and Econurture Visit
Mondays @ the Fair have welcomed some new people to the group! Great to have you – many hands make light work on Mondays when there are lots of herbaceous weeds to pull or mattock out. Purple Paterson’s Curse, some purple poppies, purple thistles and also some pink ones, plus the occasional serrated tussock or sticky weed or a woody weed for a bit of variety to keep us busy. Meanwhile when the weather allows, the chemical certified members of the group have been spot spraying the bright yellow flowering St John’s Wort, with assistance from ranger Adam on one of the Mondays.
We have been working around the eastern part of the Clancy’s Loop track where there are some lovely Lomandras under the trees. Small Wattle Mat-rush Lomandra filiformis, with yellow flowers looking like a sprig of wattle in the grass are right next to large clumps of Many-flowered Matrush Lomandra multiflora. This species has separate male and female plants and colour variants, so look at this link to see the different flower types. Come and join us any Monday at 9:30 am at the Tay St gate into the reserve at North Watson, for some time in nature with others, contributing to the well-being of the reserve and ourselves!
A male Many-flowered Matrush with masses of pollen producing yellow flowers and long strappy leaves; quite a good plant for a native garden.
Photo courtesy of Canberra NatureMapr
Damon Bassett from Econurture and his team of helpers spent a few days in mid-November spot spraying and manually removing our worst weeds from the Fair site. Damon wrote this work report. They intend to be back in mid-December to do more work funded by our grant to implement our Weed Management Plan for The Fair.
Mapped Weed Control Areas
Did you know you, anyone – not just people who are FieldMaps users, can look at what has been treated and mapped on the web? Need to use a PC or laptop for this. The 2025-26 Weed Control in dashboard view is available here. It is fully interactive. You can change the base map to Imagery Hybrid if you want to see the background vegetation image with tracks and gullies visible. You can zoom right in to a specific section of the map such as the Clancy track area where the Monday people were working on a specific date – yes, there is a date scroll box with a monthly or daily option, so you could go to just one day if you want to. The bar chart will display the Species Controlled in the area you have zoomed to. You can turn the species legend on or off, but one way to work out what weed was treated in that green polygon is to zoom right in so that it is the only thing in the map, and then that treated weed will be what shows in the bar chart. Or you can just select a polygon and have the details like species, herbicide and comments displayed.
There are other options – have a play with it. Very useful for whatever has been mapped.
Volunteers for WeedScan 2.0
Wanted volunteers to help train the next version of the WeedScan app – see here for details.
Turtle Watch
November – December is turtle breeding season when volunteers help protect turtle nests from predation by foxes. We do have Eastern Long-necked Turtles Chelodina longicollis in the dams on Mounts Majura and Ainslie. There was a recent sighting reported in Canberra NatureMapr from one of the twin dams on the Blue Metal Road. To find out more go to the Turtle Watch website.
Buru (Eastern Grey Kangaroo) Controlled Native Species Management Plan
The ACT Government has drafted a new Buru (Eastern Grey Kangaroo): Controlled Native Species Management Plan and it is open for feedback.
The plan will replace the Eastern Grey Kangaroo: Controlled Native Species Management Plan 2017 and includes a number of changes and improvements.
You can provide feedback on the plan by emailing officeofnatureconservation@act.gov.au by 18 December 2025. Your feedback will be considered during the preparation of the final plan.
Law
Environmental Justice using the law for a better world. See here for more information.
Environmental Defenders Office – how the law applies to the environment and to empower you to take action – see here for more information.
Other Reports and News Items
Greening Australia’s Year in Review 2025 here.
iNaturalist Year in Review 2025 for Australia – see here
Report on Wandiyali-Environa Wildlife Sanctuary available in the Field Natters November newsletter on this website
Landcare ACT Videos – for a range of topics, webinars, projects – see here.
Bird Call Olympics – children’s competition – see ABC video here
Native Bees article from the Conversation
Gazanias and other invasive plants – ABC News item and yes, Gazanias are a weed in our local area. Did you see Tim the Yowie Man’s article recently in the Canberra Times?
Cane Toads advancing – will a dry barrier zone stop them? See article here.
Pre-emptive action in the face of an invasion – old article about foxes in Tasmania – see here
See Change Sustainability Map 2.0 for links to just about everything! See here.
Canberra Organic Growers Society have updated their guidelines for vege growing – see here.
Read Lori Gould’s paper with colleagues about Latham’s Snipe in our wetlands here and see an event coming up on 6 December.
Stop Press: New EPBC Act
No doubt you heard or saw the news that the updated Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999, called the Environment Protection Reform Bill 2025 has passed into law with the support of the Greens. My inbox lit up with commentary about it. Our local MP Alicia Payne was enthusiastic about how good it is, but others had serious reservations about some aspects of it. See this example from the Biodiversity Council. The Conservation Councils have issued a joint response here.
Also good news for the Kosciuszko National Park of NSW: the “Brumby Bill” has been repealed – see this ABC story.
Exhibitions
Virtual exhibitions to enjoy when it’s a good day to be inside.
BirdLife Australia Photography Awards winners here.
Extinct and Endangered – by artist Levon Biss. Insects photographed in amazing detail, including a Christmas beetle. See here for more insects and here for a video on how the artist did these microsculptures. Wow!
Events
Wednesday 3 December 4pm TERN webinar Applying Environmental Data to Forecasting Health Issues: One Health in Action Register here
Wednesday 3 December 5:00–6:30pm at Albert Hall ACT Volunteer Appreciation Gathering RSVP for catering here. Everyone welcome including children.
Join us for a special celebration jointly hosted by Landcare ACT and the ACT Government to say thank you for everything you do to care for our environment. There are thousands of diverse environmental volunteers in the ACT – from citizen scientists and Friends of Groups to ParkCarers, interpretive volunteers, land carers and wildlife carers. Your collective contributions make a huge difference, and we want to celebrate you. This event will take place during the week of International Volunteer Day and is a wonderful opportunity to connect with like-minded people, share stories and ideas, and reflect on our shared achievements.
Friday 5 December 5:30pm – 7:30pm Summer Arvo Picnic – SoilEd CBR Launch by See-Change at the Watson Microforest – see here to RSVP
Saturday 6 December 8:30am – 10:30am Western Edge Guided Walk: Woodland Birds in Stromlo area, led by Kim Farley of Canberra Birds. More information and registration here.
Saturday, 6 December from 9am to 1pm Latham’s Snipe Community Day at Jerrabomberra Wetlands. See here to get tickets for guided walks.
Saturday, 6 December from 10am to 1:30pm Celebrate World Soil Day at Canberra City Farm, Dairy Road, Fyshwick with hot composting and pizzas! More information and to register see here.
Saturday, 6 December 9am to 1pm African Lovegrass workshop. You’re invited to a hands-on, boots-on, slightly-mischievous workshop on African Lovegrass — the villain of the paddock, the pest with the misleading name, the grass that absolutely does not deserve your affection.
Join us to learn how to correctly identify this culprit, treat it effectively, and strike at the perfect moment for maximum impact.
Flynn Community Hub — Ginninderra Catchment Group Headquarters (full details provided to attendees) Presented by John FitzGerald
We’ll begin with a hearty dose of theory (and a cuppa), then head outdoors to meet the beast in the field. Expect a practical demonstration with the right tools, the right techniques, and just the right amount of righteous fury. Take that, Lovegrass. After the action, we’ll regroup in the shade for a completely chemical-free lunch.
Keen? Email landcare@ginninderralandcare.org.au to secure your spot. Numbers are capped at 20, so get in quick and commit.
Seasons Greetings for all and FoMM will be looking forward to seeing you in the New Year.
Christmas Beetle.
For a Christmas treat watch and listen to this TEDx talk by Tanya Latty.
