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Workshop on the rehabilitation
and management of disturbed native plant communities
Coffs Harbour, 14-15 March 2007
This article was published in
Australasian Plant Conservation
15(4) page 4.
The downpour was so intense that the plane needed two
attempts to land at Coffs Harbour airport. This wasn’t looking promising for our
field trip and I had no plan B! Luckily, the skies cleared for the workshop –
another sunny field day in a long run of ANPC events.
This was our second NSW coastal region workshop. See APC 15
(3) pp 2-3 for the report on the first, held at
Ulladulla in October 2006. The
Coffs Harbour workshop was our biggest workshop yet, with 111 people
registering, several of them days after the closing date. You just can’t turn
away people keen to come all the way from Christmas Island, can you?
The program was similar in structure to the Ulladulla
workshop, but focused on issues relevant to the NSW north coast. Our first
speaker was Pastor Ben Bird of the Gumbula Julipi Elders Group, who welcomed us
to Country. A range of highly experienced presenters then spoke on ecological
principles, planning, vegetation condition assessment, soil characteristics,
provenance of plant material and monitoring and adaptive management – all from
the perspective of rehabilitation practice. Other topics included North Coast
Endangered Ecological Communities (EECs), case studies on coastal wetland
rehabilitation at Nambucca and Bellinger Rivers and also Urunga Lagoon, and a
summary and discussion of the Border Ranges Hotspot Rainforest Multi-species
Recovery Plan involving Queensland and NSW landholders, community groups,
researchers and agencies. Work on Bell Miner associated dieback in woodlands and
forests and a possible relationship with dense understorey lantana was outlined;
this meshed well with the demonstration of the ‘splattergun technique’ for
lantana control during the field excursion.
The field trip on the second day took us to the Jetty
Dunecare rehabilitation site at the Jetty area of Coffs Harbour. This site
admirably demonstrates the achievements of an energetic community group battling
serious urban development pressures. Discussions on weed control and some local
plant identification added to the diversity of issues covered. The next site was
Coramba Nature Reserve, a stark contrast to the Jetty beach front. About 20
minutes north-west of Coffs Harbour, the nine hectare reserve sits amid cleared
grazing land. Although small, the reserve is significant as it contains one of
the few remaining stands of ‘lowland rainforest on floodplain’, listed as an
endangered ecological community under the NSW Threatened Species Conservation
Act 1995.
Here the group rotated around activities led by four
specialist leaders, covering bushland condition assessment, monitoring,
manipulating regeneration in weed-dominated sites and soil analysis. A hot but
happy and well-fed crowd gathered back at the buses for the return to Coffs
Harbour.
This workshop, like its Ulladulla precursor, was subsidised
by the NSW Environmental Trust, which is gratefully acknowledged for its
frequent support of the work of the ANPC.
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