Speaker
Entering The Home Strait To Control Infestations Of African Boxthorn On Roydon Island
Karen Ziegler, Friends of Bass Straight Islands, Wildcare
Island rehabilitation needs to be adaptative. Observe, measure and analyze whether what your group is doing is effective and desirable. Are there new considerations? Are there new issues arising? How are networks changing? How is technology changing? How does your group accommodate and utilize positive change? How do you face negative change? How do we capacity build?
On behalf of the Friends of Bass Strait Islands I will talk of how we are embracing changes and building momentum while keeping a check on not exceeding capacity to maintain follow-up.
My professional background is in forestry, botany and ecology. This background gives me both the administrative, logistical and practical skills to drive projects that involve greater complexity on public and reserved lands. A chance opportunity lead me to the outer Furneaux islands in 2000, working with lessees of islands that were grazed, to come up management regimes to protect natural and cultural values During this time on the islands, I fell in love with the landscape and a largely ignored place with some serious threats to biodiversity, particularly African boxthorn. And now even greater threat from mirror bush and climbing asparagus.
From this the Tasmanian Conservation Trust employed me to coordinate the control of African boxthorn on two islands in eastern Bass Strait, Cat and Chalky Islands. This started in 2002 and has steadily grown into an annual program of coastal and island rehabilitation by a dedicated Wildcare group. What started as a project officer position has continued in a voluntary capacity to drive a program as president of a Wildcare group to restore the vegetation of eastern Bass Strait Islands by managing serious woody weeds, particularly African boxthorn and increasingly mirror bush. The Friends of Bass Striat Islands drive a weed control / vegetation restoration program on off shore island including Cat, Storehouse, Sentinel, Roydon, the Pascoes, Bird, Wyablena, Rabbit, Chalky, Litltle Chalky, Mile, Isabella and Strategic area of Flinder's Island including Settlement Point, Wybalena, Emita and Trousers Point. We keep going because the formal land manager has no hope of undertaking the required work and we love these islands and it is an extraordinary place of big skies, magnificent ocean, wild winds, serenity in simple repetitive tasks, noisy penguins at night, an incredible sense of achievement, an opportunity to set your body to the natural rhythm of night and day and of tides. I continue due to the success a simple approach of removing woody weeds by cutting and pasting herbicide can have and how the native vegetation bounces back.
