This article is written by Rainer Rehwinkel, a member of Friends of Grasslands and the Conservation Council’s Biodiversity Working Group
It’s not that often we get a good news story when it comes to the interaction between community groups and the maze of ACT agencies, so this story is worth celebrating, even if it represents apparently only a small victory.
The story starts with a chance visit to a site at Dawn Cres in Lawson, where I had previously seen some flying individuals of the threatened Golden Sun Moth. It was in a patch of the then somewhat ordinary looking grassland adjacent to the southern fringe of the Lawson North Grassland. (The Lawson North Grassland is another story to be told later, when hopefully we also get a good resolution). On that chance visit, in the company of FOG’s Margaret Ning, we realised that we were onto something very special. That grassland had transformed from an ugly duckling into a graceful swan, with a magnificent wildflower display choc full of iconic grassland beauties. There were Bulbine Lilies, Blue Devils and Yellow Rush-lilies galore, and signs of Early Nancies that had flowered earlier, plus a sea of Golden Buttons and a dozen other grassland wildflowers. I identified this site as a very fine example of Natural Temperate Grassland, which is a critically endangered ecological community listed under both ACT and Commonwealth legislation.
I immediately swung into action to protect this grassland, and spoke with a member of the TCCS staff, who promised to get me some stakes so that my newly formed Landcare group could mark out the site. I was concerned that it would not be safe from undue mowing. Unfortunately, that was at the height of the Covid lockdowns (remember them?), so the stakes never arrived. With lockdowns and other intervening issues during that time, little further action was able to be taken. And to make it even more difficult, that government staff member moved on, possibly never to have notified the necessary people within the relevant government agencies about the marvellous grassland that we had found.
What had been a very early encouraging sign soon evaporated: the following year, the grassland was delivered an injury in the form having a row of eucalypts and bottlebrushes planted along its perimeter. Ecologists know that too-dense tree-planting in grasslands changes their ecology, because of resultant shading and litter-drop when the trees mature. Despite FOG’s meeting with people from TCCS regarding the inappropriateness of trees being planted at other sites, the trees remained firmly in the ground at Dawn Cres.
In the intervening year, I was approached by a worker in the government’s ecology and research wing; they were keen to lay down monitoring stations in the form of roof tiles, in an effort to discover additional locations for the endangered Grassland Earless Dragon. I suggested the Dawn Cres site, because it seemed to me that habitat was suitable for that species there. So, a couple of arrays of tiles were laid down in the hope that this rare reptile might be found.
Then to add insult to injury, when Margaret and I revisited the site in the following spring, we saw with utter dismay that not only had the grassland been mown, with all its Bulbines and Blue Devils mown down at the height of their growing and flowering season, but the reptile tile arrays had been smashed to a hundred pieces! It really highlighted to us that the different agencies with responsibility for managing our environs were simply NOT talking with each other. Not only did one agency not know that the site contains a critically endangered ecological community ,and had planted trees on the site, but another agency mowed the site while it was in its most glorious spring display, after yet another agency in this octopus of a government had laid down, no doubt at great expense, a series of tiles to survey for an endangered reptile.
I was, needless to say, bitterly disappointed, and sought a meeting with a senior member of the TCCS. To be fair, I received a very good hearing and promises of action, but then, nothing more was done, despite me raising the issue about inappropriate tree-planting and untimely mowing at a forum designed to discuss matters of environmental concern between the Conservation Council and the government agencies with the responsibility of looking after Canberra’s natural resources. So, it wasn’t until the spring of last year (2024) when I still hadn’t seen any progress in the conservation of this really special site, when, revisiting the site, I was dismayed, to find significant populations of African Lovegrass, Serrated Tussock and St John’s Wort invading into the grassland; and of course, the trees were still there! There’s nothing like a bit of bitterness to spur some action, so I decided to go in with all guns blazing, so to speak. I decided to write a report describing the history of the site to-date and discussed the grassland’s values in detail. To add weight to this, I even set up a couple of plots to measure the grassland’s Floristic Value Score, the Federal Government’s Temperate Grassland’s preferred method to assess a site’s value. In my report, I set out a series of recommendations, including the erection of conservation bollards, application of an appropriate mowing regime, removal of the trees, erection of interpretive signage to explain the value of the site, and importantly, an urgent call to spray the invasive weeds. I sent my report to a number of ACT Government agencies, addressing most of the heads of the various relevant departments.
To be fair to the government people that I sent the report to, I received a response the very next day. And in the following week, I had a call from a staffer responsible for weed spraying asking for a meeting on-site. This person not only promised to get onto the weeding as a priority, but then and there, marked out a boundary around the perimeter of the site for the erection of conservation bollards. Not only that, but the following week, after discussing the issue on site with a staffer from the government’s ecology research section, they informed me that they had decided to increase the area to be protected, because they had found a patch of Chocolate Lilies outside of the boundary that we had previously defined. Because of the urgency of the weeding, I organised a Landcare weeding party to come along to at least remove the seedheads of some of the nastier grasses on the site, but wen we arrived the following Monday morning, to my surprise, I had found that the weed sprayers had already beat me to the job! And it was not long after this that I received an email from the government’s tree-planting team to arrange for a meeting regarding the trees.
I’m very pleased to report that I had a very fruitful, and informative meeting with a senior representative of the tree team today, and they explained in detail why trees are planted, where and by whom. That discussion was encouraging because of its outcome, but it really also solidified my suspicions that the various government agencies and non-government bodies, like the Suburban Land Authority, the National Capital Authority, and others are simply working in parallel universes when it comes to looking after Canberra’s environmental assets. As I have already implied, it seems that even within the ACT Government, the different department have poor channels of communication.
However, I am very pleased to report that we have a resolution that will suit the critical values of the grassland, as well as the neighbouring residents who will no doubt be a little bit surprised to see their neighbourhood trees being ripped out. The tree unit has agreed to remove the eucalypts, leaving the bottlebrushes that alternate with them in place. (The bottlebrushes, being much lower in stature, will not interfere with the grassland with undue shading or litter-drop; additionally, being a low, dense shrub, they will continue to provide habitat for birds, and a connectivity pathway along the edge of the site.) Another row of bottlebrushes will be planted closer to Dawn Cres, in the verge that is dominated by exotic grasses. It is necessary to plant these to provide cooling shade; the major reasons for planting trees in our suburbs is for both aesthetics, and now, ever-increasingly, for the provision of cooling shade in the face of our changing climate. (It is to be noted that both the existing bottlebrush species on site, the River Bottlebrush, and the species proposed to be planted, the Lemon Bottlebrush, have flowers in shades of cream, pale pink or white – this is critical in our bird-rich suburbs, because red-flowered bottlebrush species are favoured food plants of a couple of aggressive honeyeater species, the Red Wattlebird and Noisy Miner, which have a nasty habit of driving most other small birds from our gardens and parks.)
So, yes, I think we have reached some nice solutions to the problem that the Dawn Cres grassland has been to-date. This superb site that has seemed to be in the too-hard-basket has now, I feel, a far better future, one that my Landcare group will have the pleasure in assisting in the management of. And dare I say it, but I have hope that the agencies that have responsibility for management of Canberra’s environment now also face a clearer future, one less prone to miscommunication and cross purposes, under the proposal to the roll them all into one agency under the care of one minister.