A network for those who care for Land in Greater Sydney
Celebrate 30 years of Landcaring in Australia. The Landcare Awards are an opportunity to recognise and celebrate Landcare champions from rural and urban communities motivated by a shared vision to restore and protect the environment in their local community.
You can find all the information and links to apply here.
[Read more…]Water4Wildlife is an initative of Greater Sydney Local Land Services, and Greater Sydney Landcare Network to help care for our native fauna – as droughts and fires cripple our landscape.
Water is the best thing you can do for our native animals. Stations placed with fresh water (with landowner permissions), 500m apart and suitable for small animals and large macropods alike will provide our native species with the best chance of survival.
Find all the tips and tricks below, and why feeding our local species won’t help them recover. Tag your watering points with #water4wildlife and #gsln.
Thanks to Peter Ridgeway for being the driving force behind this fantastic community initiative.
With thanks to Peter Ridgeway and Gen Kyi for the information, photos and facts behind this article. Graphics created and posted by Clare Vernon, 13 January 2020. For more information please contact Greater Sydney Landcare here or check out this WIRES post on helping our native animals in an emergency here.
Mulgoa community welcomes the threatened bird species with the arrival of chick, writes Clare Vernon.
Just in time for the festive season, the Mulgoa community welcomed the arrival of it’s newest resident – a baby regent honeyeater chick.
The chick is just one of only eleven known chicks in NSW to have been reared in 2019. Unfortunately, a second chick did not survive.
Previous nesting attempts in 2009 at Mugloa were unsucessful.
The Mulgoa site represents optimal habitat with quiet, undisturbed grassy woodland with ready access to a farm dam. Both parents were observed bathing and drinking every hour, thanks in part to the abundance of branches and shrubs providing perches to drink.
The greyish-brown chick has fledged, and now joins it’s parents in a nomadic existence.
Regent honey eaters are charismatic, colourful and once common species is native to south-eastern Australian grasslands. Such habitats once provided the abundant omnivorous diet of insects, lerps and flowering mistletoe.
Despite the good news, regent honey eaters still face an uphill battle to reestablish. Development coupled with drought and the recent bush fires in the Capertee Valley – a stronghold of the species – has seen the significant loss of habitat. Further competition and aggression from other native birds (noisy miners), predators (lace monitors, greater gliders, possums and currawongs) and wind (which can blow away nests) means that 66% of all nests fail.
It is one of Australia’s rarest birds, with only 1,000 known wild individuals.
Numerous re-vegetation programs across the Capertee Valley, and Greater Western Sydney aim to increase the grassy woodland habitat of this bird.
You can help turn around the story of the regent honey eater, and indeed support all of our Greater Sydney wildlife. Planting local species, retaining fallen logs and old hollow trees, and providing water in a sheltered spot with perching and protection from cats are ideal ways to create habitat, provide water and food for these iconic species. Local nurseries such as the Hawkesbury Community Nursery at Windsor can supply locally native species.
Acknowledgements
The author thanks the kind generosity, facts and notes provided by Genevieve Kyi and Peter Ridgeway. Photo (c) Genevieve Kyi, 2019.
From Kylie Piper, National Parks Assocation (NSW), 16 December 2019.
Community Conservation Grants Now Open
Foundation for National Parks & Wildlife Community Conservation Grants are now open for applications. If you are working to preserve a piece of Australian cultural heritage, helping to restore a patch of habitat, connecting more people with our national parks or doing research on a threatened Aussie species you can apply for a Community Conservation Grant from the Foundation for National Parks & Wildlife.
“Organisations and individuals from all across Australia are eligible to receive funding through these grants” said Kylie Piper, Projects & Education Manager for the Foundation for National Parks & Wildlife. “We would love to get applications from every state so we can really understand what types of community conservation work is happening and help fund essential projects that restore habitat and species, preserve our cultural treasures and improve our National Parks for everyone to enjoy”.
The small grants round will be open for applications from December 14, 2019 until February 14, 2020.
Key areas of focus for this year’s grants are:
• Land and Water – Protection, restoration, rehabilitation and revegetation of degraded habitats to ensure their ability to sustain native species.
• Threatened Species – Scientific research with tangible conservation outcomes and on-ground works to conserve Australia’s threatened species.
• Cultural Heritage – Conserving and celebrating Australia’s cultural heritage as part of the gift we leave to future generations.
• Parks for People – Improving National Park facilities for the enjoyment of all, to foster and encourage the appreciation of nature.
Applications for the Community Conservation Grants are now online and individuals, NGOs or government departments working in these areas are all eligible to apply for funding for projects commencing in 2020.
For further information and to apply for a grant visit https://www.fnpw.org.au/grants or contact the Foundation for National Parks & Wildlife on grantsmanager@fnpw.org.au
For more information
Projects & Education Manager (National), Kylie Piper
Email: kpiper@fnpw.org.au
Ph: 1800 898 626
