You can view the minutes of the Bushcare Network meeting held in August 2016 here:
The next meeting is scheduled for Wednesday February 1 at the Mountains Community Resource Network meeting room, Lawson Library building, Lawson. All welcome, especially the co-ordinators of each Bushcare group. The main item on the agenda is the purpose and future direction of the Network. Please come and contribute to the development of your Bushcare Program!
Vale St Baramy Trap in Full Flow – June 2016
On May 2 the Leura Falls Creek and Jamison Creek Catchment Working groups came together along with Blue Mountains City Council Natural Areas and Healthy Waterways teams to do “catchment crawls” (minibus tours of the key work sites) in each other’s catchments. Residents of the Vale St end of the Leura Falls Creek catchment were also invited.
In the morning, the Leura Falls Creek tour showcased the recently constructed stormwater upgrades including the Vale St Baramy Trap and raingarden – shown below in full flow with the recent heavy rains in early June. The Jamison Creek Working Group had an opportunity to see what types of stormwater management systems will be installed in the Jamison Creek Catchment in the near future.
After lunch, a tour of Jamison Creek Catchment gave us a chance to learn about where the upgrades are planned and how they will be constructed.
The stormwater improvement projects in both catchments are an initiative between Water NSW and Blue Mountains City Council. The catchment crawl was filmed by KFM Media, Katoomba. Thanks to the tour guides, Eric Mahony and Geoffrey Smith from Blue Mountains City Council and Peter Bennet who designs the Baramy Traps. Thanks to Monica Nugent for driving the bus. And thank you to every one who came on the tour.
Vale Street – June 2016 11
At a special awards dinner on Wednesday 6 April, the Leura Falls Creek Improvement project was announced as joint winner of the 2016 NSW Award for Excellence in Integrated Stormwater Design. Congratulations to all the Blue Mountains City Council staff and contractors involved in the project and the Leura Falls Creek Catchment Working Group.
Have Your Say on the Council’s proposed service delivery plans and budgets for 2016-2017.
The Council has prepared its Draft Operational Plan 2016-2017 and invites the views of the community.
The draft Operational Plan 2016-2017 includes:
The draft documents are now on public exhibition until Wednesday 25 May 2016. The following documents can be accessed from the Library at the right of this webpage or hardcopies can be viewed at the Katoomba and Springwood Office of the Council or in Council libraries:
Draft Delivery Program 2013-2017 incorporating Operational Plan 2016-2017
Draft Fees and Charges 2016-2017
Lodge your comments via the online submission form below by Wednesday 25 May.
Here is the the link to the councils page:
Gang Gang St before
On Saturday 27 February members of bushcare groups in the Leura Falls Creek Catchment and the Leura Falls Creek Catchment Working Group, came together for a weeding morning at Kingsford Smith Park. Since 2007 the group’s yearly get-together has taken place at the iconic Leura Cascades. This year, in order to tackle the source weeds in the upper part of the catchment, the groups decided to focus on Kingsford Smith Park.
The park has both historical and horticultural values and is significant to the Leura Falls Creek Catchment. It contains many noxious and environmental weeds. They are a problem not just as a source of propagating material – water, wind and bird borne – but also because weeds are a major component of the vegetation that block views into the Park. A number of formed drains enter into the Park and ground water seeps in. The groundwater has a high impact on the creek and catchment because it picks up water from the Great Western Highway, the rail corridor and Katoomba township. A creekline forms within the park, and drains through private property before entering the Vale Street wetlands and joining Leura Creek. Leura Creek flows through Leura Park and into the Leura Cascades and the National Park. There is a significant stand of Mountain Ash – Eucalyptus oreades – within the park. This stand occurs in the triangle of land between William, Gang Gang and Lovell Streets.
The work on the day focused on removing the privet hedge along Gang Gang St, weeding in the ‘oreades patch’, removing ivy from Tree Ferns, removing trad and spot weeding for noxious and environmental weeds. Team privet could probably get a Guinness Book of Records achievement for their work along Gang Gang St– the most privet removed in the shortest period of time!!
The get-together also provided an opportunity for a strong working relationship between Blue Mountains City Council’s Urban Weeds, Bushcare and Parks teams and the community bushcare groups. For all your work in the Park, many thanks go to David Whiteman and team, David Pinchers and Mark Vickers and team. To Karen Hising, Tracey Williams and Erin Hall, many thanks for the organisation of and support on the day and many thanks to the 17 bushcare volunteers for your amazing weed blitzing work. We all agreed that it was inspiring to start making a difference in this part of our precious catchment.
If you would like to find out more about Leura Falls Creek Catchment and the work that we are doing please contact Jenny Hill at jhill9228@gmail.com
“Team Privet” after a job well done
With the help of the community Hollows as Homes aims to assess the availability of tree hollows and their use by wildlife across the Sydney region. The Hollows as Homes team wants you to report tree hollow(s) in your backyard, street, park and/or paddock through www.hollowsashomes.com. A description of the information to record is available on the website.
Galah at nest in tree hollow. Photo: J Turbill
The information you provide will inform Councils’ management plans. In NSW, hollow-dependent species include at least 46 mammals, 81 birds, 31 reptiles and 16 frogs. Of these, 40 species are listed as threatened with extinction. An aim of Hollows as Homes is to collect data to inform Councils decision-making process when installing supplementary hollows to support biodiversity. Hollows as Homes therefore welcomes reports of nest boxes and cut-in hollows in addition to natural tree hollows
Cut-in Hollow for small bird Photo: J Martin
The NSW Environmental Trust is planning new initiatives to better support environmental volunteers and volunteer programs, but we need to know what is important to volunteers first. To discover this, the Trust is conducting a survey of environmental volunteers and we would really appreciate your participation so that we can include your views.
Who should do the survey?…. anyone who has done ANY kind of unpaid work (‘on-ground’, administrative or other support, advocacy, fundraising) that benefits the environment, with an organisation (government or non-government) or group, in the past 12 months.
By completing our survey you are helping volunteer programs AND you can enter our prize draw for a one year NSW National Parks entry pass for one vehicle.
Please click on the link below to start the survey, which should take up to 20 minutes to complete. The survey data is being collected by Quality Online Research. All responses are confidential and no individual will be identified in analysis or reporting.
| Please complete the survey |
We are looking for a broad range of views, so please pass this email on to the members of your organisation/group and anyone you know who volunteers for the environment.
The survey will close on Monday 7 March 2016.
If you have any questions, please contact Nicole Balodis at the NSW Environmental Trust on 02 8837 6068.
Thank you for your time and your valuable input.
The Bushcare office, Ray Richardson and Hugh Todd have been working quietly away on updating the new platform for the weeds website, and it is now live!
The finished website will have 64 weed profiles, and resources to help with weed control. We have changed the system so the website can intelligently resize to look good on all screens used for web browsing – from phones to desktops.
It can be found at www.weedsbluemountains.org.au, for those who would like to have a look around.
We have retained some of the fantastic features that Barbara Harley and John Penlington worked on, like the weeds brochure and some of the original articles.
Due to the advancements of user friendly web design we (at the office) can add articles and information quickly and easily. If anyone within the bushcare community would like to donate some time to work on the website with me, or photographs that are better than what we have, we would be very grateful.
Get involved now.
We encourage you to participate and provide your feedback in the online survey, special interest workshops, popup consults held in public spaces and through the take-home group guide.
1. Online survey: Click here to participate in an online survey on volunteering
2. Popup consultations: Click here for details on popups we are hosting across communities in NSW
3. Special Interest Workshops: Click here for details and to register for forums that will be held by volunteering sector
4. Take-home group discussion: Click here to download an agenda and a note-taking template. Please scan and send the completed note-taking template to volunteering@facs.nsw.gov.au.
Engagement on the 2nd NSW Volunteering Strategy closes on 9 October.
Best regards
Simon Watts
Director, NSW Volunteering
Participation and Inclusion
Department of Family and Community Services
Greater Sydney Local Land Services has recently drafted a Landcare Strategic Plan to guide its support of, and engagement with, the Landcare community over the next five years. The plan is currently open for community consultation.
The Landcare Community is defined as:
Feedback from Landcare and Bushcare groups, Bushcare Coordinators, Landcare networks and others on the Plan is welcomed.
The community consultation period closes on Monday 6 July 2015. Please email all feedback through to admin.greatersydney@lls.nsw.gov.au
View the GS LLS Landcare Strategy here.