Featured Project - Caring for Country

Our most recent project talk was from Susan Price: 'Caring for Country'. Listen here. Download her presentation here

Susan says:

“I live on Mouheneener Country in a suburb named Kingston Beach, just south of Hobart in lutruwita, Tasmania. After almost 50 years of working in health care services I retired and, although well prepared, suffered a surprising loss of the deep sense of purpose that had sustained and motivated my work and much of my life. I struggled with this for quite a long time until a Landcare promotion popped up on my computer saying ‘DO SOMETHING! Do something near you.’

Prompted, I discovered and joined Kingston Beach Coastcare. Together we dig weeds, and plant native vegetation to stabilise and repair beach dunes and foreshores, riverbanks and saltmarsh, wetland and coastal cliff tracks. Through membership of this caring community, I discovered other networks which kept widening into other networks. The Kingborough Council area has an astonishing 58 different Landcare groups of people caring for country and an entire array of co-operative alliances with businesses, government and philanthropic individuals and groups. Some of the organisations include:

· Kingston Beach Coastcare

· Friends of the Little Penguins of the Derwent group of volunteers and their collaborative link with scientists (UTAS and ANARE) and a network of potters who created and built large clay habitats for the endangered Little Penguins whose populations have plummeted.

· Handfish Conservation Program. Handfish live in only a few places needing a shallow estuarine reef with specific characteristics. They are now critically endangered. The conservation effort includes a collaboration with scientists and a ceramic artist (Jane Bamford of Kingston) developing and creating ceramic spawning habitat, a captive breeding program with a Sea Horse farm in northern Tasmania, and a scuba diver Guardianship program.

· Men’s Shed Swift Parrot Project. The Swift Parrot is critically endangered. The local Men’s Shed makes special nesting boxes to prevent introduced sugar gliders from gaining access and devouring the birds. A network of scientists, arborists and tree scaling volunteers install and monitor the boxes and parrots.

· Cleaning Up the Pacific Star Fish from the Derwent. Last year scuba divers, skin divers, and a small army of rock hopping people cleared over 600 kgs of predatory star fish that are killing and smothering the sea country of the Derwent Estuary.

· Other groups touched on include:

o the community philanthropic group Tasmanian Conservancy who bought a large parcel of land at Tinderbox to create a protective reserve for the tiny 40 spotted Pardalote and other wildlife indigenous to Tasmania

o Dark Sky Alliance – working to ensure the night sky remains dark for nocturnal species health, bird navigation, astronomy and human wonder.

Last year I became secretary of a committee representing 24 Landcare groups working in the natural Reserves of the Kingsborough Council area. We held a workshop to decide what use the committee could be in the current environment and have a plan to engage with all 58 land and sea caring groups plus others with the view of potentially building an advocacy alliance for our beautiful local environment and all its inhabitants.”