Presenting at the Birdlife Australia National Congress in Portland
Last Saturday, I spent a great day at the Birdlife Australia Congress which was held in Portland for the first time since 1957!
There was a fantastic local flavour in the middle part of the day, with sequential talks by:
- Bob Green – looking at the bird monitoring results associated with the ForestrySA biodiversity corridors,
- Bryan Haywood from NGT – speaking about the Birdlife SE SA monitoring at Pick Swamp, and
- Myself – giving an overview of the history, ecology and hydrology (including the NGT restoration trial) of Long Swamp.
Hopefully the subsequent Discovery Bay campout based at Nelson (which I wasn’t able to attend) gave those present a good taste of some of the local wetlands they heard about in the talks on Saturday.
It was also very exciting to catch up again with, and hear a talk from, Chris (CJ) Wilson – all the way from Ireland. I first met CJ many years ago, when he was on exchange with the then DEH in Mount Gambier. He is one of the nicest blokes you could hope to meet, and his enthusiasm for nature is very contagious!
I received lots of positive feedback at the congress from people attending from different parts of Australia (and the world for that matter) about the work we (that is NGT and our partners) have been doing to restore wetlands in our region – something we should all be proud of.
NGT’s Bryan Haywood presents on behalf of Birdlife SE SA about bird monitoring results at Pick Swamp – Birdlife Australia National Congress in Portland,Victoria, on the 4th of October 2014.
