Page 2517 - Week 06 - Thursday, 10 May 2012
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
2. ACT Weeds Forum – Turning back the tide on Friday, 9 March 2012
• The Workshop was attended by a range of Commonwealth Government officials including representatives from the Department of Defence, the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences, NCA and CSIRO.
(7) Conservation Planning and Research (CPR) in ESDD continues to examine results from ecological burns across a range of vegetation types in the ACT. For example, last fire season, the McTaggart Street Swainsona recta site was burnt to improve the condition of this declared plant species. This site is continuing to be monitored and will inform further on-ground management and ecological burn regimes.
(8) CPR has completed the assessment of Wells Station Road (GU07) and Nicholls (GU08). Both sites were dominated by native grasses and contained a diversity of native forbs. The sites still meet the definition of the endangered ecological community Natural Temperate Grasslands of the Southern Tablelands and the ACT. However both sites are considered to be in the lowest condition class of this community. Using a widely accepted method to quantify the site value of native grasslands the Nicholls sites had a value of nine and the Wells Station Rd site had a value of five. In the ACT a grassland usually has to have a value of seven or greater to be considered part of the endangered ecological community. High condition sites generally have values of 20 or greater with very high condition sites having values of more than 40. Conversely sites that would not be considered part of the community often have values of two to four.
Assessment of the other sites is on-going, assessments can only occur when seasonal conditions are optimal to ensure that the best estimate of a sites values are made.
(9) The Grasslands Forum did not make recommendations as such but four areas for priority attention were identified. These are:
1. Promotion of the grasslands throughout the ACT.
2. Improved public knowledge of the grasslands.
3. Identified strategic vision.
4. Improved Government/resident/organisation relationships.
Many activities have been undertaken that contribute towards these priority actions, examples include but are not limited to:
• Increased research and interdisciplinary projects, as requested under priority action 1, including a Masters project at the Australian National University funded by the ACT Government looking at the impacts of competition on different functional groups of native forbs, seed collection and germination protocols being developed by the Australian National Botanic Gardens for a variety of grassland forbs, a government funded project by Greening Australia aimed at improving the condition of native grasslands through the targeted planting uncommon native grassland plants, ongoing CSIRO research into demographics and genetics of Button Wrinkelwort to assist in threatened plant species management, University of Canberra research into the conservation of the Grassland Earless Dragon, and the rehabilitation of Golden Sun Moth habitat, distributional surveys for Golden Sun Moth and Striped Legless Lizard undertaken as part of the accelerated land release program.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video