By u6973085 Astor Lee (508 words)

When it comes to ecological restoration or environmental protection, many might think of tree planting, photos of families with their shovels around a tree seedling. Don’t get me wrong, tree-planting is a great activity, but it’s not the only thing we can, and honestly, should do. Recently, I went out to Scottsdale Reserve in Southern NSW to do a day of work experience with Phil Palmer and Bush Heritage Australia, and here’s what I learnt.

Where to start?

Scottsdale is a poorly degraded site as it has been cleared and farmed for 300 years. As such, it requires a lot of labour and human intervention to restore it to pre-disturbance quality, with great uncertainty in its success rate. Nevertheless, it was established as a nature reserve to protect most importantly box gum grassy woodland, which is critically endangered with 5% of original habitat remaining. We chose to plant along and within a creek bank, which is a key spot to restore as creek lines are one of the sites most prone to degrading. Protecting creek lines also helps with the health of the whole ecosystem in the area to prevent water erosion. Additionally, its potential success means regaining connectivity between nearby patches, which greatly improves the flow and the resilience of biodiversity. It is a lot harder work than most other sites, and Bush Heritage Australia has taken up the mammoth task.

It’s more than putting trees into holes in the ground.

There needs to be diversity of plants and variety in structure, to provide different species the habitat they need, so besides trees, there are shrubs, sedges and grasses too. For grasses planted along the creek line, we chose water-tolerant species, specifically Lomandra longifolia, Carex appressa, Poa labilladeri, for their soil stabilization character.

The planting process starts from collecting seeds from mature trees and growing it in the nursery. Once they are strong enough, we then transplant them into the field. We can dig holes either manually or with augers, then plant the trees in. The trick here, is to select species and spots wisely. We planted sedges and grasses in and along the creek back, and trees and shrubs in rows parallel to the creek line, each row 1 m apart, and each planting 3m apart, alternating between tree and shrub, and finally guarding all trees and shrubs plantings. We chose to plant in a denser cluster to help restore vertical structure more easily.

Great fun in the sun?

It was actually raining when we were working! But it was great fun, working in a team digging holes and filling them with different seedlings. I was very satisfied after a long day’s work, and am very excited to see the impact of what we did today would have years down the road.