FoMM Newsletter – May 2025

Prior to seeding we will loosen or roughen the soil at a number of selected sites to make it receptive for the seeds and remove any competitive weeds such as Paterson’s Curse. Then we scatter the seed followed by light mulch on top to hold the seeds in place.

When: Sunday, 18th May 2025, 1pm – 4pm.

Where: meet at the park entry at Tay / Ian Nicol Streets, The Fair North Watson; view this map.

What: Scarify soil, spread seeds, and scatter light mulch at selected sites.

Bring: Sun protection, garden gloves, a light mattock if you have one (label with your phone number in case it gets lost); we provide seeds, buckets for collecting mulch, some tools and gloves.

Every Monday a group of keen and friendly FoMMers meet at The Fair to assist in the rehabilitation of what was once a highly degraded piece of former Yellow Box Red Gum Grassy Woodland, an endangered ecosystem.  Now thanks to persistent efforts over many years, that degraded site again is a box gum grassy woodland, and we are implementing strategies to control priority weeds identified in the Weed Management Plan 2024-29 for The Fair.  This is part of our environmental grant which provided funds for contract spraying organised by PCS, for areas with dense infestations, with volunteers providing the workforce to map and attack those same priority weeds where they are less dense, especially in sensitive areas where wildflowers abound and along gullies where spraying is not an option.  New invasions from suburbia are found and nipped in the bud.  Any bare areas are targets for direct seeding or planting of tube stock in conjunction with the Office of Nature Conservation project on rehabilitation.  So come along any Monday at 9:30 to the Tay St gate meeting place on this map and join in the weeding, seeding and watering if it keeps dry, and see and contribute to the progress yourself, helping the endangered grassy box gum woodland.

Photo by Barb Read.

During April the Mondays@The Fair group have watered the native Tall Sedges planted near the Fair dam by the ANU Intrepid Landcarers, weeded out the Umbrella Sedge from the edge of the same dam and done some weeding in the Sweet Vernal Grass gully, so its handy to be able to identify a sedge from a rush or a grass. Here is a good way to remember the differences between them:

Sedges have edges, rushes are round,

Grasses have nodes right to the ground.

So,what does it mean?  They all grow in grassy looking clumps and have a great variety of different looking seed heads.  But look at the stems under the flowering or seeding heads.  That’s where you’ll see that

Sedges have edges, rushes are round,

Grasses have nodes right to the ground.

Nodes are those little lumps or joints where the leaves attach to a grass stem, and the stems are hollow between the nodes.

Have a look at this little video.

Spotlight Walks Report

In April a mixed group of children and their parents joined a FoMM spotlight walk which began at sunset. We had some good sightings of microbats at dusk. After dark, the kids found a centipede and a few spiders in leaf litter, and a few moths flying in torch beams. As the days become colder, spider and insect numbers decrease. We also watched at least one very active Krefft’s Glider (formerly known as a Sugar Glider) foraging in a Eucalypt tree near the track. A week earlier, on a night walk, we spotted a very pretty Ringtail Possum Pseudocheirus peregrinus in a Drooping Sheoak Allocasuarina verticillata.

If you are interested in joining a FoMM spotlight walk, contact Jenni Marsh at

FoMMnaturewalks@gmail.com

To see more about Sugar Gliders look at this article from The Conversation.

Photo courtesy of Canberra NatureMapr.

Doyou know you can locate sightings from CNM on to your Google Maps on your phone? (Provided it is not a sensitive sighting with a hidden location – the orchid above is an example of a sensitive sighting.)

Goto the CNM website on your phone, laptop or computer and open the sighting you are interested in locating on Google Maps. Find the location coordinates– they will be under the map picture. Move your cursor to hover over the coordinates – message comes up in a box “Open in Google Maps” Click on the message and Google Maps opens and drops a pin on the right spot for those coordinates. In Google Maps you can add a label and put it into a list you create for example a list called Weeds.

The above description is what happens on a computer; might be slightly different on your phone.

A warning: don’t go berserk adding lots of things to your map – it’s not that easy to remove them again later!

Using CNM to record locations is particularly helpful for weed control, if you are not using the FieldMaps app tool, because you need to know what weeds are growing where, so you can control them and revisit the site in the future to check results. Also please record rabbit warrens on CNM, as currently there is no rabbit recording available in FieldMaps for parkcare volunteers.

Spatially sensitive data are suppressed for sightings like orchids or bird nesting to protect the species, or the owner of a record can suppress its location, but the location data from these sightings are available to government agencies involved with land management.

Bogong Watch

See here for how to contribute.  A couple of options for submitting photos: one is through iNaturalist.

A Guide to iNaturalist: An Australian Perspective

From Australasian Plant Conservation 33(2): 24-26 See ALA here.

Try This – a Citizen Science Survey where You are the Subject

It’s the start of the flu season, so:

1. Get your Flu Vax soon and
2. Join FluTracking – see here for info.

It truly does take less than half a minute each week to fill in the survey from a link in an email sent to you (unless you get sick;  then there will be a few more questions to answer).

3 – 11 May Canberra Tree Week

What is it? Very varied program of events – see what’s on here.

Celebrate Tree Week by writing to your local member of parliament in the new federal government to ask them to end to native forest logging Australia wide, as the Victorian and Western Australian governments have already done.

Tuesday 6 May at noon – Rally in Petrie Plaza – Save the Canberra Earless Dragon

The Conservation Council and Friends of Grasslands call on the Airport and newly elected government to halt construction of the deadly and unnecessary Northern-Airport Road. More info here.

Wednesday 7 May at 3pm – TERN Webinar – Invasive Species Vs Threatened Species

See here for information and to register.

TERN – Australia’s Terrestrial EcosystemResearch Network

Choir Concert: Riversong Saturday 17 May

Details and tickets at website.Fund raising for the Australian River RestorationCentre.

Friends of Grasslands FoG Events

See their calendar here for information and look forward to an update soon.  Non-FoG members are welcome to participate in FoG events.

Sun 25 May, 10am-12 noon, FoG Queanbeyan projects.

Visit the Button Wrinklewort Nature Reserve in Letchworth, and take a river walk. To register contact margaret.ning@fog.org.au

World Environment Day – ACT Environment Awards 2025

Thursday 5 Jun, 5:30pm – 9:30pm AEST  – See here for information and to get free tickets.  Food and drink will be available to buy at the venue.

Expanded Carbon Credits in the Pipeline?

Ken Henry and Native Forests – see this ABC story and look at the Australian Climate and Biodiversity Foundation

Chris Bowen, Minister for Climate Change and Energy,  speech to the Australasian Emissions Reduction Summit, 30 October 2024 which announces new carbon credit methodologies being developed.

For a contrary view of the worth of carbon credits see The Australia Institute release from 31 October 2024.