Put this date in your diaries – Sunday 7th March 2021, 10am. It’s Clean Up Australia Day and we have registered our first event for the year to clean up the Muckleford Bushland Reserve.
https://www.cleanupaustraliaday.org.au/fundraisers/bethmellick/muckleford-bushland-reserve
Here are the minutes from our AGM on Sunday. Congratulations to the committee who have been re-elected:
-President: Neville Cooper
-Vice-President: David Griffiths
-Secretary: Beth Mellick
-Treasurer: Eleanor Wright
-Ordinary members: Albert Wright, Chris McKenzie, Richard Mann, Michael Billington
Don’t forget our get together is this Sunday (13th December) from 3-5pm at the Muckleford train station. Beautiful food (from local boutique caterer) and drinks are all provided, but bring yourself a chair. Also bring yourself a wine glass if you want to partake in wine or bubbles (all supplied).
We are making a small film for the next Landcare Link Up in February so come and be an extra in the movie about Muckleford Landcare. Friends and families are welcome, as are new members. Bring balls or bikes for kids to play. It looks like being a beautiful day.
If you are looking for a Christmas present idea, Muckleford Landcare member Miles Geldard is selling his nest boxes at $100 each. If you’d like to order a phascogale box, you can see samples on Sunday. https://wildlifenestboxes.com.au
If you have any queries, please call Beth on 0431219980 or email your RSVP to Beth.
The North Central CMA is actively looking to support
large scale carbon projects across our catchment as we
recognise the potential contribution of the carbon market
to support our Regional Catchment Strategy (RCS)
objectives, such as climate change mitigation, retention
and protection of on farm biodiversity, biodiversity links,
stewardship and increasing soil health.
It is our intention to set up an interested landholder
register to allow us to facilitate and enable large scale
projects with our NRM partners in the region. We would
like to hear from any landholders that would be
interested in participating in the carbon market – soil or
revegetation.
As a guide we have provided the following criteria, but
we encourage anyone with an interest to register their
details with us as opportunities may exist for smaller
sites. Keep in mind that a longer-term commitment would
be required on these projects.
Criteria for land
• The preference would be for 50 hectares or
more but 20+ hectares would be acceptable OR
• Long stretch of riparian zones
• Ideally area should provide opportunity for
biodiversity, biolinks and indigenous outcomes
• Looking for ecosystems that hold carbon
Once we have an established list of interested
landholders, we will be in contact in early 2021 with next
steps. We will not share any personal information without
your permission. The intention of this exercise will be to
create project scale – if we get enough of you on board
then we are more likely to have a viable project.
We will be holding a very informal event for our AGM, planning for next year, and social get together with members.
It is SUNDAY 13TH DECEMBER, 3-5pm at the Muckleford train station.
In the shade of the old trees, down by the creek, we will supply food (Covid protocols means we can’t share food), but you are welcome to bring your own drinks and a comfy chair. Families and guests welcome.
Please RSVP here for catering purposes. All food will be vegetarian and vegan, but please let me know if you need gluten free.
The Muckleford Landcare committee is taking ‘shifts’ to clean up the Bassett Creek planting. People are going in twos to take off the guards from our last community planting, as funded by the NCCMA. Plants are doing really well and will hopefully take the form of a corridor with the previous plantings from 16 years ago.
The Muckleford Bushland Reserve is public land, entry via the Muckleford School Road. If you’d like a walk, please take a bag with you so you can pick up some rubbish at the same time! It’s a shame, but people are dumping rubbish there.
There have also been some sneaky people taking home firewood…
BUT…it’s a lovely place to forage around. There are some old exclusion plots that must have been erected by a government agency, and no longer monitored or maintained. (Editor’s note: Dave tells me that they were put up by Muckleford Landcare in the early 90s). One fence is down, but the other two plots are still intact. They aren’t very high so don’t keep out roos, but they are worth looking in, to find some lovely plants in flower.
Dear Members, we have carried out the annual monitoring of the Walmer Conservation Reserve. We did this in small groups – Beth, Nev, Theo and Eleanor in the morning; and Beth, Nev, Theo and Dave in the afternoon. We’re sorry we couldn’t extend the invitation to more members, but we didn’t want to break any Covid-19 restrictions.
Here are our results for 2020:
-we checked 88 boxes on the day
-10 x Brush-tailed Possums; 1 x Brush-tailed Phascogale; 13 x Sugar Gliders; 11 x bats
-20 of the boxes contained a critter: 6 had sugar gliders, 10 had possums, 1 had a phascogale, and 3 contained bats (bat species unverified at this point)
-7 of the boxes had evidence of phascogales using them (fresh nests)
-8 of the total boxes were for pardalotes (so no activity this time of year or evidence of use)
-35 critters in total
-2 boxes had bees
Some of you may remember a workshop we held a couple of years ago as part of our Water in the Landscape series, on the property of Landcare members, Paul and Kylie. Muckleford Landcare Vice-President, David Griffith, spoke to us about getting moisture back into the soil, and he got into his tractor and did some ploughing to show us the key line technique.
Paul and Kylie are continuing their restoration work on their Walmer property, and during the ‘lock down’ period they have: prepared a site for some revegetation on their dam; done some more key line work in a degraded section in the bush to improve hydration and aid the recovery of understorey plants; also key lined on slopes with degraded pasture to again improve hydration and promote pasture growth.
Thanks for sharing. If you are doing something on your property that you would like to share, please let Beth know via email.
