In October Dan Florance (with me as his apprentice) began the monitoring of the project sites from round 2 of our Box Gum Grassy Woodland Habitat on Farm project. It’s a hard job but someone has to do it 🙂

It’s such a treat to discover what has started happening once the works have begun on the sites. I thought in this post it would be good to touch on why every single project site is so important.

“How do conservation areas that are limited in extent contribute to ecosystem services and functioning across the landscape?

Maintaining grassy woodland biodiversity through the provision of core conservation areas can be equated to maintaining a store of critical supplies. This store contains the ingredients and tools that may be used to sustain, rehabilitate and create new resources in the future, as well as provide sustenance and habitat for organisms in the present. A core conservation area may contain a range of plant and animal resources of benefit to other parts of the property, provide habitat and food for wildlife, and sustain critical ecosystem services (pest control, pollination, soil health). By minimising agricultural impacts on a portion of the property the options for the future are increased” This quote is from ‘Managing & Conserving Grassy Woodlands’ S.McIntyre, J.G.McIvor & K.M.Heard.

I can really understand where they are coming from in this quote when undertaking monitoring in the project areas. Each project, on different properties, and even within the one site can have huge differences in species diversity, especially groundcovers. You can really start to see how taking, even small actions, to conserve and enhance areas on your farm will contribute to the long term survival of Box Gum Grassy Woodlands. Through monitoring we now know where some species are that we haven’t seen on other properties. This has potential in the future for us to share with each other to create greater diversity across all our properties and assist with the future of these plants within Box Gum Grassy Woodlands.

Just a couple of small examples are Pale Vanilla Lily (Arthropodium milleflorum) which is a gorgeous, quite large, lily that I have not seen anywhere except on one property near Eugowra, last year when monitoring we found the Yass Daisy (Ammobium craspedioides) on one property near Mandurama and in this recent monitoring we have found the Kangaroo Apple (Solanum aviculare) near Canowindra. Now this may not seem that exciting to you, but to me it is wonderful to know we have these species in the area and importantly, to know where they can be found. Potentially this information can be used in the future for more conservation projects. We are so happy to work with everyone who is keen to look at protecting/enhancing Box Gum Grassy Woodland on farm and want you all to know you are contributing more than you realise by putting aside, or managing an area a little bit differently to the rest of the farm. Together we can make a big difference!!

Here’s a few pictures from some of our monitoring….