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Thursday, 11 July, 2024
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Protecting elms in winter Community organisation Friends of the Tulliallan Elms had this year’s first winter Quarterly Friends Gathering on Sunday 7 July. The crowd gathered at Tulliallan Avenue of Elms in the early morning mist in Clyde North, which started with training, picking up the litter and labelling the trees. As the group’s last tree conservation program was in March this year, president Raavenan Jayaraman talked about experiences with elm trees in seasonal changes. “To think that the trees have stood there for 124 years. How many cycles have they gone through and standing there? That’s amazing.” Story page 10
From top left clockwise: Stefan Marzec, Akhil Vinodkannan, Samthiya R, and Shantanu Kulkarni are picking up the litter around the elm trees. (Gary Sissons: 416068)
‘Forgotten land’ By Violet Li Environmental experts are concerned about the condition of a high-valued conservation area in Clyde, as they found weeds taking over. A recent audit report by the conservation organisation Glassy Plains Network assessed the protection status, condition, and future of 36 Conservation Areas around Melbourne, which were identified under the Melbourne Strategic Assessment (MSA) program more than a decade ago. Coming into force in 2010, MSA is a joint agreement between the State and Federal Gov-
ernments to “permanently” protect threatened species and ecosystems around Melbourne’s outskirts from sprawling urban development, including Natural Temperate Grasslands, Grassy Eucalypt Woodlands, and species like growling grass frogs, golden sun moths and striped legless lizards. The majority of the 36 established areas are in Melbourne’s West, and only two of them are in the South-eastern growth corridor. Conservation Area 35, Clyde-Tooradin Rail Reserve, has patches of high-quality Plains Grassy Woodland dominated by black wattle Acacia mearnsii.
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It is identified as the potential habitat for the Southern Brown Bandicoot, Maroon Leakorchid, Matted Flax-lily, Swamp Everlasting, Swamp Fireweed, and Purple Blown-grass. Adrian Marshall, author of the recent audit and the facilitator of the Glassy Plains Network visited the site three years ago when he was writing the report. He was not satisfied with what he discovered. He said that the landowner VicTrack was not actively managing the area. “It did not look well maintained. There are weeds taking over and orchids are quite hard
to identify,” he said. “This conservation area is probably one of the forgotten ones by MSA. It’s already on public land, so in a way, they don’t have to think about it very much. “I can guarantee you that nobody from the MSA would have been out to these sites for years, probably. They were surveyed when they were initially surveyed. And then they kind of forgot about them.” MSA has not acquired the 35 as the trigger for securing conservation areas is through the planning permit process. Continued page 10
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