Hello to all of our Landcare Members, Partners, Sponsors and Friends throughout the Bass Coast Landcare Network.

It's so great to gradually see a return to in person Landcare events, there are plenty in this issue and also round up of local Landcare Group and BCLN news and project activities. There are grant opportunities, plants, information and resources for your Landcare Groups, plus opportunities to have your say about the management of some of our Bass Coast landscapes. 

Make yourself a cuppa and enjoy our latest edition of the Bass Coast Landcare Network E-news.

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UPCOMING EVENTS 

Are you interested in learning more about how other farmers are integrating regenerative agriculture into their farming operation? Are you at that stage where you are ready to take action but don’t know where to start? Do you want to meet people who are experiencing the same challenges as you? Join us on this exciting farm walk to the Kernot property of Janette and Andrew Allen who are at the early stages of their regenerative agriculture journey. Also joining us is respected agronomist Chris Alenson who has provided management advice to Janette and Andrew and will talk about some of the fundamentals of regenerative agriculture. We look forward to seeing you on this exciting farm walk on Friday 30th April 2021 from 10.30 am to 1.30 pm

If your farm is located within the watershed of Port Phillip or Westernport Bay and you are considering transitioning to a regenerative agriculture farming system, then this course is for you! This 3-week course aims to help you develop a profitable and family-friendly regenerative farm business. The course will help you understand the motivations behind your decisions, whilst helping you transition to a regenerative focused business suited to your landscape, supporting well being, natural systems and profit.
Mark Gardner is a Regenerative Agriculture advisor with Vanguard Business Services. He has extensive agricultural experience specialising in holistic farm & land management with family businesses to improve profitability and land health.
Session 1 | Thurs Apr 22nd - Session 2 | Thurs Apr 29th - Session 3 | Thurs May 6th - Each session will be run online via Zoom from 10.30 am to-12.30 pm
Click here to find out more about course content and register your place.​

Are you interested in learning more about on-farm water management in a changing climate?  Do you want to work with your landscape and be better prepared for extreme rainfall events?  Join us for this exciting field day on Monday 3rd of May from 10.30am to 2.30pm where you will find out more about:

• What Southern Gippsland’s future climate will look like, particularly focusing on rainfall and soil moisture with John Clarke from CSIRO.  
• How you can manage your soils and landscape to increase soil moisture year-round with the Mulloon Institute.
• How to apply these concepts on farm with an afternoon farm walk at a typical Southern Gippsland grazing farm.

This is a field day not to be missed.  We look forward to seeing you there!

The next River Garden Blitz day will take place from 930am-1230pm on Saturday 8th of May, with a focus on setting up a new volunteer area to suit your needs. We have just moved our VanHut to a more convenient location at the bottom of our swale beds on the hill so it's now time to make it more of a home and useful space for us to gather at the River garden! We will also be sheet mulching and setting up new garden beds around this area to add to our 'all access' gardening area at the bottom of the swales.

There will also be an afternoon session with a guest speaker and topic yet to be announced, look out for an update on this later in the month. We would love to see you down at the River Garden! 

Click here to find out more about the River Garden and join our River Garden Community by signing up as a volunteer. 

The National Landcare Conference is the largest knowledge sharing convention for the Landcare community. This national event brings together Landcare groups and volunteers, landholders and farmers, Indigenous land and sea managers, landcare facilitators and coordinators, educators, research agencies, natural resource management professionals, and other community environmental groups and individuals to share insights, learn and connect. The conference attracts delegates from around the world, and from rural, regional and urban communities in Australia with a common purpose – a vision to actively restore and protect the environment in their local community through sustainable land management and conservation activities.

Hosted by Landcare champion and ABC TV host, Costa Georgiadis, the 2021 National Landcare Conference program includes keynote and plenary speakers, panelists, session streams and a comprehensive field trip program around the Greater Sydney region. Due to COVID-19, the 2021 National Landcare Conference and 2021 National Landcare Awards will be hybrid events with both in-person and online delegate options.

Click here to find out more and reserve your spot!

GROUP AND NETWORK NEWS

Daryl and Margret Hook recently held the last of many Anderson Inlet Landcare group farm walks on their majestic farm at Pound Creek. The Hook's have sold their farm to move to Leongatha after 35 years of Landcare transformation and farming of Herford Cattle. Their farm provides a great example to other Landcare members and farmers of how to set up a low input sheltered Beef farm with Daryl and his family managing to turn a site with only 5 trees into one with over 175,000 indigenous plants.

As a final gift to the Anderson Inlet area, the Hook's re-fenced their many kilometres of wildlife corridors, placing the new fence a further 3mt out from the old fence so all the corridors are now between 20 to 25mt wide. Little Melaleuca ericafolia's can be seen suckering only a few weeks after, in the new non-grazed open space. If you have ever had the pleasure of visiting this property, we are sure you will agree that Daryl’s enthusiasm for spreading the word on the importance of planting indigenous plants to create shelter for stock and biodiversity for native plants and animals is second to none.

Click here to find out more about the Anderson Inlet Landcare Group

Landcare features at the Phillip Island Nature Parks Community Day 

Phillip Island Landcare Group participated in the Phillip Island Nature Parks Open Day on Sunday 14th of March at Churchill Island.  It was a stunning weather day and Churchill Island glowed in all its glory.  We partnered ourselves next to Totally Renewable Phillip Island for the day.  In my experience, when our group attends open days or holds our AGM, these are great days for volunteer recruitment.  This was no exception and I believe we now have community members who wish to start up a Cowes Coastal Group.  Another highlight of the day was meeting members of the Sunshine Rotary Group who donated their caravan to us.  They were delighted to see it again in use and are heading down this year to the Island to participate in one of our planting days.  (From PILG President, David Rooks)

BCLN’s own Jason McCracken also got to team up with Phillip Island Nature Parks Cat Research Technical Officer Frank Gigliotti for a stall that provided information to the local community on Feral cat impacts and solutions as well as Rabbit issues and control methods. There was a great response to this area with a lot of community members showing positive interest in finding out what actions they can take in protecting Bass coast’s beautiful biodiversity and environments.

Phillip Island Nature Parks would love to hear from you!  Each year PINP asks the Community to spend a moment to give them feedback about what you know about the Nature Parks, what you would like to know more of and to tell them anything at all to help them work better with you. You will go into the draw to win a prize pack from Local Clothing including a beanie, t-shirt or tank, stubby holder and stickers. Closes 31 May 2021. Click here to complete the short five minute survey. 

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For more information about getting involved with the Phillip Island Landcare Group Click here. 

If you ever needed a reminder of just how important all of your Landcare work is, check this out from the Kongwak Landcare Group Facebook page, who posted this photo from around 120 years ago! Without all of you working to restore our landscapes, this is how it would still look......

Click here to find out more about the Kongwak Hills Landcare Group.​

The Yallock Bulluk Coastal Park Draft plan is now open for Feedback. This is a big coastal park linking San Remo to Inverloch via a network of trails for a variety of users, proposed visitor areas, car parking and amenities to improve experiences in nature, respect cultural heritage and values and showcase this unique part of the world. This is your coastline, your walking trail, your regional backyard and this is your chance to let the State Government know your thoughts and ideas. You can contribute online through this link www.engage.vic.gov.au/yallock-bulluk or in person at: 

Mon 19 April, 4 - 7 pm at the Kilcunda Community Hall

Tues 20 April, 3 - 6 pm at the Wonthaggi Library

Sat 24 April, 10 - 1 pm at the Inverloch Community Hub

Register attendance [email protected] or 13 19 63.

The Bass Coast Landcare Network Indigenous plant nursery is now open for retail plant sales on Fridays! Many types of local indigenous species are on offer, all grown by our Nursery Group volunteers led by Landcare Staff, in a range of sizes including hico tubes, forestry tubes and 6 inch pots. 

The nursery operates most Fridays. Prior to visiting please confirm you are coming via email with managers Stevie  [email protected] and Robbie r[email protected]. Please note payment is by card only and receipts will be emailed or sent via SMS.

Click here to find out more about our Indigenous Nursery.

The Centre for Invasive Species has launched a Feral Photo and Video competition with prizes of outdoor cameras, books and trap devices. BCLN has entered this photo of Fox with a Magpie! You can submit images and video footage which showcase invasive species such as pest animals, weed infestations, exotic insects and/or the damage these species cause. Remote camera images and footage is allowed. Entry is free and you can enter as many times as you'd like. The winning entries will be completely decided by you, the audience, through a popular vote.

Entries opened 2nd February and close on Friday April 30th.

Click here to see the competition rules and to apply.

GRANTS, TRAINING, INFORMATION AND OPPORTUNITIES FOR LANDHOLDERS

The Food to Market Program will invest in projects to support jobs, deliver productivity improvements and capitalise on new opportunities across the agri-food supply chain. Projects will help to fast-track economic recovery and deliver more resilient supply chains.

The Food to Market Program will provide funding of $50,000 up to $1 million on a co-contribution basis to businesses for eligible projects that align with the objectives of the program. The Food to Market Grant Program opened on 31 March 2021. An Expression of Interest may be submitted at any time from opening of the program until its close.

Landcare Australia has developed free resources for environmental community groups to help them get started, promote activities and engage their local community to be involved. They have created editable templates so that you can change the information and insert your group name, as well as links to start a group, information on Landcare volunteer recruitment, media kits, posters, event invitation templates, DGR Policy and even a video on how to film your very own Landcare Project.

The Victorian Government wants to hear from you on what’s important in climate change adaptation in Gippsland and how The Gippsland Regional Climate Change Adaptation Strategy can be developed to help the region prepare for the impacts of climate change by building our resilience and capacity to adapt.

The strategy will capture and highlight the risks, priorities, opportunities and actions that matter to us, laying out adaptation action in the region for the next 5 years. As part of the development of the strategy a consultation phase is being run through the Engage Victoria website. This provides all stakeholders and the public with the opportunity to review and provide comment on the strategy ahead of its finalisation in June 2021. Responses will be accepted until Tuesday 4 May 2021.

Applications are now open for another new round of Junior Landcare Grants! Victorian schools and other eligible organisations are invited to apply for The 2021 Victorian Junior Landcare and Biodiversity Grants, which are for up to $5,000 each for projects that focus on:

• Improving biodiversity through the development, improvement or restoration of habitat for Victoria’s native plants (flora) and animals (fauna), and/or
• Educating, involving and engaging young people in valuing and actively caring for Victoria’s natural environment.

Projects can be either direct-action projects (with an on-ground component) or in-direct action projects (with an education component), or a mixture of both. Applications Close by 30th of April 2021.

If schools would like advice in preparing their grant application, please contact Education, Training and Communications Manager, Lisa Wangman at [email protected] *Note: these grants are administered by Landcare Australia, not Bass Coast Landcare Network.

Click here for all details on how to apply. ​

The BCLN works crew has begun fox baiting around beautiful South Gippsland on dedicated landowners private properties as well as Parks Victoria sites along the Cape Liptrap Coastal Park. At this early stage fox bait takes have been a great success. 

Rabbit Project Officer Jason McCracken recently visited the French Island community to demonstrate rabbit warren entrance identification. Rabbit warren smoker (pictured above) is used to mark all entrances to the warren to then effectively implement further rabbit control processes.  

The hard working crew are now taking bookings for tree planting season site preparation too.  The BCLN Works Crew are available to assist with many of your site preparation jobs including fencing, spot spraying and weed control. For competitive pricing and free quotes, please click below to contact our Works Crew and request a quote. As a not-for-profit, any revenue generated goes back into supporting the activities of the Bass Coast Landcare Network!  

Click here to view our services.​

What a month of activity at the River Garden! We had a dedicated team of volunteers attend our Welcome Back to the River Garden Blitz on Saturday 13th of April,  where we weeded and harvested the swales area and our weekly visits from Interchange Gippsland Group have continued where participants have a great time learning about different techniques to grow food. We were also lucky enough to host a group of VCAL students from Leongatha Secondary College. Its amazing what a bunch of young, fit students can get done in a few hours, we managed to get the rest of the swales weeded, fertilised, mulched and ready to go for autumn plantings. With the weird season of late fruiting we are having, and white cabbage moths still active we might have to wait a little bit yet to get those broccoli and cauliflowers in the ground. By the time this newsletter goes out we will have also had our April Blitz morning and a Creative upcycling and Composting afternoon with local Permaculture expert Rick Coleman, so there is definitely lots happening at the River Garden which is awesome to see!!

Offset Your Vehicle Emissions with Local Planting Projects!

If you feel passionate about the environment and want to do your bit for our beautiful native flora and fauna, why not consider offsetting your car emissions with Bass Coast Landcare Network? Just click on your car's size to make a donation, which will cover the planting of enough indigenous plants to offset your car’s emissions for a year and contribute to restoring your own local landscape. 

All your friends and family will also see your complimentary car sticker showing your commitment to the Bass Coast environment.

Bass Coast Arc – Landcare Public Fund making projects a reality – Donate today to make a difference!

The Bass Coast Landcare Public Fund is a regional non-profit organisation focusing on conserving biodiversity throughout Bass Coast.​ The Bass Coast Arc – “Community Access to Public Space” concept supports community groups to work with public land managers to improve the environment of our public spaces and create appropriate access to these unique areas.

Your contribution, no matter how small, helps to protect native plants and animals in Bass Coast’s most ecologically important landscapes. ​

What's your story?

We would love to hear from you and your Landcare group with stories and photos of what's been happening in your area and any suggestions of things that you would like to see in your E-news.

We look forward to meeting and catching up with you at upcoming events and activities around Bass Coast.

Until next edition, 

Happy reading, from the Bass Coast Landcare Network.