Okay, so this one sounds obvious. But it’s sometimes forgotten that as well as protecting ancient forests and remnant trees, native animals need us to create new places for them to live as well.
At Daisy Hill in South East Queensland that’s involved us planting new grassy woodland – 11,600 trees across a 30 hectare area. That’s a lot of koala habitat. By working at such a huge scale the habitat should be self-sustaining, helping generation after generation of koalas.
Our team loves plants but when vegetation is non-native it often needs to be ripped out. Tearing up greenery can seem a bit counter-intuitive when you’ve got a name like ours, but for our new native plants to survive they need more natural conditions. And that means getting rid of the environmental weeds that are of no use to koalas or the other local animals.
Have you ever tried planting 11,600 trees with a spade? No? Neither have we.
We use a few different techniques for our landscape-scale restoration projects, and for Daisy Hill we picked ‘mechanical spot cultivation’. Two machines were involved – a 20 tonne and an 8 tonne excavator. The big one did the heavy lifting. And the smaller one was important for reaching over existing vegetation without disturbing or damaging any native foliage.
A paddock full of tree guards might look like a job well done, but there’s still lots that could go wrong for our new grassy woodland koala habitat. Weather is always a big factor in Australia. And animals – even some of the ones we want to enjoy the habitat once it’s fully grown – can undo a lot of good work.
That’s why we’ll be closely monitoring Daisy Hill, including the use of GIS mapping to track the progress of the new koala habitat.
You can play a part in helping koalas and other animals too by making a secure donation today. Every dollar we receive goes towards restoring and conserving habitat across Australia. Please make a donation today.