Mount Rumney Landcare Group Inc.

The Group has been actively caring for the Mount Rumney  (lower Meehan Range Area) since the 1960's when local landowners regularly gathered to control serrated tussock. The Group's focus broadened some 30 years ago towards protecting the high conservation value grassy blue gum, black gum and black peppermint woodlands and forests and the habitats they provide for threatened species such as the swift parrot, masked owl and eastern barred bandicoot.  The Group has attracted well over $200,000 in grants and support to implement on-ground works, education, and awareness activities for private landowners based on the Mt Rumney Vegetation Management Plan 2013. Recent focus has been on working individually on a one-to-one basis with landowners to improve their appreciation and understanding on how to protect and care for their remnant vegetation communities and the critical habitat it provides including hollow-bearing trees. To this end, over the last 15 years, the Group has successfully developed, funded, implemented, and reported back to the community through regular newsletters, 6 major projects involving 1:1 engagements between landowners and friendly environmental consultants involving follow-up on-ground works. Whilst most landowners are keen to take on a shared responsibility to care for the region's natural values, the Group's ongoing challenge is to create a behavioral and attitudinal change in newly arrived landowners and old conservative landowners who continue with their understorey clearing and park-scaping of their properties. This is  often driven by the misapprehension that clearing far beyond the TFS-recommended Defendable Space areas will reduce the risk of bushfires    In partnership with traditional burning consultants, the group has delivered very popular, hands-on events involving 60 attendees, each of which was part of a series of 3 community cultural burning events staged on private land. Participants learned the basic skills to apply cultural burning practices to their own properties to improve their natural values and reduce excess fuel loads. More recent community workshops developed, promoted (via Mt Rumney Landcare Website, newsletters and Facebook), and delivered  include serrated tussock ID and control, minimizing roadkill of wildlife, snake handling and native wildlife expose as part of a Landcare Grant funded NVA of Centauri-Canopus Bushland reserve.