Going Gang-gang for our cockatoos

Community efforts to build local habitat for endangered Gang-gang cockatoos near Porepunkah continued last Sunday, with Upper Ovens Valley Landcare Group's (UOVLG) planting another 100 trees to strengthen the local ecosystem. "We were delighted to welcome many new faces to our planting session at the Ovens and Buckland rivers confluence site," UOVLG vice president, Martyn Patterson said. "Focusing on bank stabilisation, we selected Narrow and Broadleaf Peppermint and Apple Box trees, which are Indigenous food trees for our endangered Gang-gang cockatoos. "We have a reasonable colony of Gang-gang cockatoos in the Bright and Wandiligong area. "They thrive here because historically we've had two introduced food trees for them. "One of them is the Hawthorn bush, with the white blossoms and red berries in autumn, as well as Liquid Amber...it's a lovely tree with lovely autumn colours, but the seed pods are very difficult to deal with." Mr Patterson said rather than planting trees solely for land care, UOVLG has steered towards planting more and more feed and fruit trees for the Gang-gang cockatoos in areas they are known to inhabit. "We recognise it's important in the long term to replace the trees the Gang-gangs need to survive and of course, with that comes the nesting trees: old hollowed trees which people often use for firewood," he said. "We also planted about a dozen Snow Gums...there are different varieties around here, but Snow Gums are the ones we know are endemic to this area along the Ovens River. "We're clearing out willows and woody weeds, the Tree of Heaven, the Sycamore...all the introduced species which have escaped into people's gardens. "We're clearing out those patch by patch, spraying the blackberries and the weeds, stabilising the river bank, then putting in corridors of native plantations between whatever's on the bank and the river." Mr Patterson emphatically thanked all involved, who had helped to plant about 10,000 native trees so far. "Trees planted by us and by the different groups we work with are all Indigenous native trees," he said. "If people are planting trees in their new gardens, we ask them to think about planting trees for wildlife: if they've got room for medium-sized eucalyptus trees, or nut tree or a fruit tree, that would be great. "Our next event will be a stall at the Bright market, then water sampling for platypus DNA at several sites in Bright and Wandiligong. "A workshop with Birdlife Australia in October will focus on planting for wildlife and dealing with Indian Mynas."

Going Gang-gang for our cockatoos

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