NGT Out and about — Photos from the field in May

We had a wonderful group of geocachers visit Walker’s Swamp last Friday. It was a case of many hands make light work!  We had 30 people from across Victoria meet at Walker’s Swamp to help us find and remove paddy melon (Cucumis myriocarpus).  I wonder if, being geocachers, their eyesight is greatly advanced (they’re used to looking for small inconspicuous objects!) as they found a lot more plants than we first thought were there!

In 1 hour we had collected a tandem trailer full of these plants – a job that would’ve taken Lauren, Rosemary & Lisa a much longer time – and they certainly wouldn’t have enjoyed it as much!  They were a great bunch of people – several had visited Walker’s Swamp 2 years ago to help us plant in the fenced offset site, so they were very happy to come back & help us. 

We were really very grateful for their amazing help.

Two weeks ago NGT and Friends of parks volunteer Helen Bawden snapped these photos of NGT’s Jess Bourchier and volunteers undertaking some Glenelg Spiny Crayfish (Euastacus bispinosus; or pricklyback) monitoring. This slow-growing and long-lived crayfish is nationally endangered, so it’s important to keep track of the populations to see if they are recovering.

Below is a video of a successful ecological grassland burn. This burn was undertaken at NGT’s Eaglehawk Waterhole Restoration Reserve, near Bangham in SA. NGT senior ecologist Bryan Haywood was on the scene taking this video, with caretaker Andy.