Almanda Report 2016: To Restore Threatened Wetlands in Scott Creek Conservation Park by Rehabilitating Degraded Upland Swamps, Bogs, Spring-Fed Gullies and Seasonal Creek Lines.

By Friends of SCCP

The Almanda Project is restoring rare and beautiful native habitat along eight riparian areas (wetland areas along watercourses) of the Scott Creek sub-catchment within the Scott Creek Conservation Park. Scott Creek Conservation Park is an important biodiversity hotspot of considerable conservation value in the Mount Lofty Ranges south of Adelaide, South Australia.

There are few surviving examples of riparian areas in the Mount Lofty Ranges due to land clearing and draining farmland since European settlement. The riparian areas that remain are rapidly degrading due to livestock grazing, week invasion, active erosion, and altered water regimes.

The Friends of Scott Creek was established in 1990 and, since that time, have been restoring habitat in the Conservation Park. The Friends group initiated the Almanda Project in 2014 to restore native habitat for twenty-six state-threatened species and two state-threatened species in the eight important riparian areas. The Almanda Project is named after the Almanda Swamp and Creek system in the centre of the park, where historic ruins of an old silver mine, established in 1868, can still be seen today.

The project is restoring and increasing the extent of quality of habitat by strategically removing large infestations of serious environmental weeds to facilitate natural regeneration and targeted revegetation. The project is integrated with regional and local government conservation programs.
The Almanda Report 2016 begins with a progress report from Peter Wotton, the new president of Friends of Scott Creek Conservation Park, in which he pays tribute to Tom Hands, the highly regarded founding president who sadly passed away late last year.

The report describes the methods for successful weed management and the work being done in each of the major creek systems, including Almanda Creek, Blackwater Creek, Fern Gully, and Mackereth Creek. The Mackereth Creek system will realize the benefits of a long-term plan thanks to a partnership with the US-based clothing company Patagonia Inc.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris AU
• Release date: Sep 6, 2016
• ISBN: 9781524516499

Friends of SCCP

The Friends of Scott Creek Conservation Park have been caring for the Park for twenty-five years. They have some forty members and a number of affiliated supporter groups and individuals. Many members bring long-term experience to delivering this project. Several members are excellent field botanists who also have a dedicated interest in birds and natural history. One is a cartographer who has produced a series of excellent maps used in the project. A number of members have received awards, recognizing the quality of their environmental efforts, including one that was awarded Australia’s Centenary Medal for services to the environment and another that has received the prime minister’s Environmentalist of the Year Award. The group itself has also won awards in recognition of their work in the ongoing habitat restoration within Scott Creek Conservation Park.

Book preview

Copyright © 2016 by Friends of SCCP. 731038

ISBN:   Softcover   978-1-5245-1650-5

             EBook       978-1-5245-1649-9

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Rev. date: 09/01/2016

Xlibris

1-800-455-039

www.xlibris.com.au

Contents

Chapter 1 Introduction

Chapter 2 President’s Report

Chapter 3 Weed Management

Chapter 4 Botanist’s Covering Letter

Chapter 5 Almanda Creek South

Chapter 6 Blackwater Creek

Chapter 7 Fern Gully

Chapter 8 Mackereth Creek System 10-15 year plan

Chapter 9 Financials

Chapter 10 List of Contributors

Chapter 1

Introduction

The Almanda Project¹ is restoring rare and beautiful native habitat along eight riparian areas (wetland areas along watercourses) of the Scott Creek sub-catchment within the Scott Creek Conservation Park. It is an important biodiversity ‘hotspot’ of considerable conservation value in the Mount Lofty Ranges south of Adelaide, South Australia.

There are few surviving examples of riparian areas in the Mount Lofty Ranges due to land clearing and draining of farmland since European settlement. The riparian areas that remain are rapidly degrading due to livestock grazing, weed invasion, active erosion and altered water regimes.

The Friends of Scott Creek Conservation Park was established in 1990 and since that time they have been restoring habitat in the Conservation Park. The Friends group initiated the Almanda Project in 2014 to restore native habitat for 26 state threatened species and two state threatened ecosystems in the eight important riparian areas. The Almanda Project is named after the Almanda Swamp and Creek system in the centre of the park, where historic ruins of an old silver mine, established in 1868, can still be seen today.

The project is restoring and increasing the extent and quality of habitat by strategically removing large infestations of serious environmental weeds to facilitate natural regeneration and targeted revegetation. The project is integrated with regional and local government conservation programs.

The Almanda Report 2016 begins with a progress report from Peter Watton, the new President of Friends of Scott Creek Conservation Park, in which he pays tribute to Tom Hands, the highly-regarded founding President who sadly passed away late last year.

The report describes the methods for successful weed management and the work being done in each of the major creek systems, including Almanda Creek, Blackwater Creek, Fern Gully and Mackereth Creek. The Mackereth Creek system will realise the benefits of a long-term plan thanks to a partnership with the US based clothing company Patagonia Inc.

This report is a tribute to all those people who are part of restoring the beautiful and rare natural diversity in this exceptional part of South Australia.

Chapter 2

President’s Report

ALMANDA PROJECT – PROGRESS REPORT – June 2016

After the Almanda Project got off to a flying start in 2014, its second year started as a year of consolidation, but ended up providing some terrific new developments and a good deal of on-ground work.

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Colourful native understorey in Spring

Much effort took place behind the scenes in the first year, particularly with the planning that went into designing the project. We had to work out what we wanted to achieve through the project and how we would go about achieving it. It was decided that therefore, we needed to be able to measure the project’s success, and this meant introducing a robust monitoring component.

Critically, funding had to be raised to enable the primary weed control work to be undertaken by contractors. At the time, the lack of funding available for on-park management was a major motivation for establishing the Almanda Project in the first place and, without a significant fund-raising effort, we would not be able to sustain previous restoration works in the park.

We needed contractors who we were confident would be able to undertake the work to a high standard. In particular, they had to have good plant identification skills to ensure weed treatments did not damage the very native vegetation we are trying to protect.

Many of the supporters of the Friends of Scott Creek Conservation Park are aware that we lost our inaugural president after a long battle with illness late last year. Tom Hands was our friend, leader and mentor, holding the position of president of our group for all of its preceding 25 years. Tom provided strong, knowledgeable, but unassuming leadership with his humble and light-hearted manner and was a driving force behind establishing the Almanda Project. This project is providing a remarkable and lasting legacy to Tom’s passion and dedication to Scott Creek Conservation Park.

Much of the current Almanda Project was based on earlier work done by Tom and his close friend Tim Jury. Tim, who also coordinates the Nature Conservation Society of South Australia’s Threatened Plant Action Group², suggested that when sourcing grant funding it was better to develop projects that extended across multiple creek systems, rather than just one creekline at a time.

In 2009, Tom and Tim had co-written a project profile "Restoring upland swamps of Scott Creek in the Southern Mount Lofty Ranges of South Australia³, which was judged a highly commended entry" by the Society for Ecological Restoration International and Global Restoration