Working Party @ the Drainage Line – Sunday 20th July 1 – 4 pm
Fruiting Broad-leaved Privet, Ligustrum lucidum. Each year Friends of Mt Majura remove thousands of young privets that have invaded the nature reserve from nearby gardens; come and help remove this year’s crop!
Where: Meet close to the water tank off Rivett/French Streets intersection, Hackett; view this map.
Bring and wear: Sun protection, long sleeves and pants, sturdy shoes and garden gloves, if you have them. We provide tools, equipment and some gloves.
When: Come at 1 pm for an introduction and give as much time as you can spare. All welcome, no experience needed.
What: Removing evergreen invasive weeds like privets spread by seed-eating birds from the neighbouring gardens. Or spreading woodchips to cover Chilean Needle Grass Nassella neesiana (CNG) previously sprayed by FoMM volunteers. CNG is another invasive species spread by people mowing and distributing grass clippings with seed in them.
For more information see here or contact secretary@majura.org
Tree Walk – Sunday 27th July 2 – 4:30 pm
Eucalyptus mannifera, Brittle gum fruits have a domed top with 3 to 4 protuding valves. Fruits of eucalypts are woody capsules often referred to as gum “nuts”.
Photo from FoMM’s Flickr gallery.
Meet at the Mackenzie Street entrance to the nature park near Grayson Street, Hackett.
Ecologist Michael Doherty will lead a walk showing the trees and shrubs of Mount Majura. We’ll be walking on trails, mainly on the easy lower slopes and possibly up a medium slope to see Snow Gums
Wear sturdy shoes and warm clothes; bring drinking water and a gold coin donation for a tree list. Enquiries secretary@majura.org
Reports
Mondays @ the Fair
The Mondays @ The Fair group volunteers on a foggy June morning smile for Jenni Marsh’s camera after eating yummy banana and walnut loaf provided by Liese.
It was a cold 6 degrees on a beautiful weed-free stony hill covered in mosses, lichen and Red-anther Wallaby Grass Rytidosperma pallidum tussocks under the Eucalypts. By then, we had weeded a patch of Horehound which had been eaten down to ground-level and attacked some isolated patches of Serrated Tussock (some partially eaten). On the walk back to base, we cut and dabbed more Cootamundra seedlings and saplings, a few Sweet Briar roses, and a few patches of small Paterson’s Curse rosettes.
It was a better day than the Third Sunday FoMM event planned for June when the woody weeds won because of the wet weather!
Come and meet the volunteer group any Monday at 9:30 am at the Tay St, North Watson entrance to the reserve and join in the activities to help restore the endangered Box Gum Grassy Woodland, a remnant of the vegetation which once was common where the older suburbs of Canberra are now. You will be most welcome!
Snow
There are reports that there was a bit of snow on Mt Majura on 9 June. Doesn’t happen very often but here is a photo from FoMM’s website from a previous occasion.
Snow on the summit of Mt Majura on 13 July 2016.
Photo by G. McVeigh.
Climate
Like to know more about what is going on with the weather? Why were there floods on the central coast, when this area and further south were in drought? Meet the Climate Dogs, the farmers’ friends helping to explain what’s going on. Those floods were Eastie’s influence, then Indi came along with a cloud band streaming in from the north-west of the continent bringing moisture from the Indian Ocean. But Sam has been staying too far south and the fronts which generally bring rain to south-east Australia have not been here, at least until recently. Some of the other dogs are more for the north of the continent; climate change is also a factor to consider. NSW issues a monthly report on seasonal conditions (with a hole in it for the ACT) but you can still get the picture. See here.
News
Threatened Species
Canberra Earless Dragon – see the latest news about the developments at the Canberra Airport, subject to review by the Environment Minister, where the dragons’ habitat is in the path of a roadway. Habitat destruction equals extinction.
Leadbeater’s Possum Gymnobelideus leadbeateri – see Atlas of Living Australia (ALA) entry here. This species was thought to be extinct in NSW but recently it has been sighted in camera trap pictures from forest near Yarrangobilly. Penny Sharpe, MLC, NSW Environment Minister announced the finding on 1 June, although the pictures were taken last October. See the Conversation story by ANU Professor David Lindenmayer and colleagues for the sequence of possum pictures. What a good news story!
Gouldian Finch Chloebia gouldiae – named by John Gould to honour his artist wife Elizabeth after her death following the birth of their third daughter. See ALA entry here. Birdlife Australia has a profile of this colourful bird. Once common across northern Australia, they were trapped and exported in thousands, but this is now illegal. EBird has lots of photos here.
Migrating Wildlife
Bogong Moths – see this Conversation article about their ability to navigate by the stars and the earth’s magnetic field. Dreyer, D. et al. Nature https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09135-3 (2025)
Here is a diagram of their life cycle with a map of their migration routes. And see here for the Red List assessment of their status as endangered.
Extinct Species?
See this photo story about the Desert Rat-kangaroo (Caloprymnus campestris)?and its museum-held bones, now available on the internet along with many other skeletons for you to look at if you wish. How long should elapse between a last known sighting and a declaration of extinction? Sometimes many decades elapse between sightings of rare fauna. Look at the description of the Desert Rat-kangaroo on the Atlas of Living Australia here and read about relatively recent unconfirmed sightings in the Lake Eyre basin following periods of rain in that part of the world. Notice that it was named by John Gould in 1843 – he named very many Australian mammals as well as birds.
Invasive Species
Fighting Plagues and Predators – download the 2021 report from CSIRO and the Centre for Invasive Species Solutions.
Gazanias – See update from the Invasive Species Council here.
A ”White List” for Weed Management – see the arguments for adopting this approach here. This document is a bit dated, but the situation has not improved since it was published. The “Black List” approach, which restricts trading in a limited list of species, is clearly failing to limit weed invasion and the ecological threats invasion poses to our native species. The number of plant species on the ACT’s Black List, the Biosecurity (Pests) Declaration 2025, is 98 and most states have only slightly higher numbers, ranging from 130 to 174 in 2023 according to the Restrictions on Trade list collated by Weeds Australia, but Western Australia had 935 on its restricted list then. Western Australia has a Western Australian Organism List (WAOL) database that allows you to search for organisms declared under the Biosecurity and Agriculture Management Act 2007. There are currently 56396 organisms in the database (accessed 25/06/2025) of which 51666 are permitted. For plants there are 48316 in the database and 47376 of these are permitted – these permitted plants are their “white list”. Unlisted organisms are automatically prohibited entry into WA; a risk assessment is required before importing them from overseas or interstate. However, even this “white list” system has flaws because of the way it was first set up; if a plant was in WA at that time and its risk as an invasive was not recognised, it is on the permitted list. Presumably there is a mechanism for review, but as of now, plant species I recognise as highly invasive weeds are on the permitted list.
The Invasion Time Line
This generalised graph shows why early detection and action is important for invasive species which threaten our ecosystems. A “naturalized” exotic plant is one which does not have a substantial impact YET. There are thousands of them in Australia, and our weed management systems are not focused on these weeds.
The graph shows why quarantine, preventing entry of exotic organisms, is so important and should be supported. Australia does have strong quarantine, but the news stories are about the failures where known high risk pathogens and pests have evaded quarantine measures. See for example this ABC story on Shot Hole Borer. And some organisms just cannot be kept out – think Bird Flu strains and Covid.
The current strategies for weed control are focused on weeds with big impacts – The Weeds of National Significance and their ilk. More needs to be done in the middle of the invasion curve where eradication and containment are possible and cost effective.
TERN – Australia’s Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network is looking at Threatened Species and approaching them as a sort of inverse of Invasive Species and developing tools to help with the monitoring of both. See the recording of their June webinar here.
A comparison of the time lines for threatened species and invasive species. Smart monitoring is the key to effective assistance for threatened species and for control of invasives. Screenshot from the webinar recording.
Camera trap monitoring can be effective as in the Leadbeater’s Possum story, if the processing of the images can be handled efficiently – processing is being improved using AI technology. For species which vocalise such as birds, frogs and koalas, acoustic monitoring offers many advantages. See the presentation in the same TERN webinar.
Screenshot from the same TERN webinar (video at 35:36) introducing Professor Schwarzkopf’s presentation.
Events
Thursday 3 July 7 pm – Field Naturalists Association of Canberra July Monthly Meeting – Speaker: Shoshana Rapley “Bush Stone-curlews” Details here.
6 – 25 July Exhibition at the Queanbeyan Art Society Art Society & Gallery on the banks of the Queanbeyan River
The Exhibition for July is sponsored by?the Molonglo Conservation Group: “Unearthed: the Role of Soils in our Lives” Competition/Exhibition
Open to all artists, the Exhibition officially opens on Sunday the 6th of July and runs until Friday the 25th of July. This annual exhibition is designed to promote art about the need for protecting our local catchment area.
For more information and gallery opening hours see here.
27 July – National Tree Day
7 September is National Threatened Species Day but on 3 August – entries close for Threatened Species Photographic Competition – details here
4 -10 August Landcare Week includes Landcare Through the Lens Photo Campaign with submissions closing 1 August
8-9 August – Environmental Volunteers Conference 2025, Friday field trips, Saturday at University of Canberra. Theme is Regeneration. For more information and to register see here.
Books
Like to know how to go about identifying plants? Satisfy your inner botanist with these two books. Check them out at the National Library. Name That Flower 2019 edition is also available to borrow from the ACT library. Beautiful photographs and drawings to show the details which are important in identifying different flowering plants, both native and exotic. Explains and uses botanical terms. Read more about these by going to the nla links.
• Ian D. Clarke (2015)
Name those grasses: identifying grasses, sedges and rushes.
Melbourne, Victoria : Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria.
ISBN: 9780980407648
https://nla.gov.au/nla.cat-vn6936301
–includes grasses (Poaceae) but as said in the subtitle, not only grasses, furthermore sedges (Cyperaceae) and rushes (Restionaceae) .
– available in printed paperback book.
• Ian D. Clarke and Helen Lee (2019)
Name that flower
Carlton, Vic. : Melbourne University Press .
https://nla.gov.au/nla.cat-vn8127202
ISBN: 9780522876048
–guides to all kinds of plants, focussed on south-eastern Australia, yet globally useful.
– available in both printed paperback book and ebook.
Children’s books to buy: Harry Hartog bookseller is a proud partner for the Karajia and Environment Awards for Children’s Literature and 10% of sales from any of the shortlisted titles will be donated back to the Wilderness Society, who have been running these Awards for the past 30 years. 24 shortlisted titles are available for purchase here or visit the Harry Hartog shops in Canberra.
Like reading biographies? Mr and Mrs Gould by Grantlee Kieza is available from the ACT Library.
Gouldian Finches showing forms with black or red head colours. There is a rarer form with a yellow head. They eat grass seeds and nest in tree hollows or in holes in termite mounds.
Photo by Col Roberts, courtesy of BirdLife Australia.
