Tree Planting with Landcare

Posted by Sue Jones 
 
A group of Brighton North Rotarians travelled into the country on Sunday 9th August 2009 to plant trees on 3 farms under the guidance of Landcare
Sue organised 15 volunteers to do an environmental project on land that had suffered from severe land erosion or salinity affected the soil quality.

Landcare, the local farming community, and the Rotary Club of Manningham did a magnificent job organising about 150 volunteers to participate in this project. (Our contribution was some 10% which was a great effort)

Convoys of 4 wheel drive vehicles took us from the car park to the site assembly point where we received hole diggers, trays of seedlings & tree guards. Gloves and warm clothing were necessary as the temperature was a cool 4 degrees.

The major site was a hillside that had a ravine caused by erosion as well as hollow areas under the surface also caused by erosion. This was causing the hillside to become unstable and soil was being washed away. Landcare ripped the hollow areas out, filled in the ravine and any other hollows and gave the hillside a layer of clay like soil.

The teams planted seedlings along rip lines that followed the contour of the hillside.
See the difference the plantings made to a barren hillside. Sum 6,000 seedlings were planted that morning.

One RCBN team that arrived early and finished their 'patch' were moved to a second farm where previous plantings had failed. Several teams planted wattle & gum seedlings which hopefully will strike better than 2 years ago.

Landcare and the local community put on a very good lunch in the local CFA building.

It would be interesting to revisit the sites in about 5 years time to see if all the effort produced a successful environmental project.
Well done to those who participated.

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