Peel River Recovery

One of the Peel region’s greatest environmental issues is eutrophication, a process where waterways receive excess nutrients that stimulate excessive plant growth. 

This has resulted in large algal blooms, causing a steep decline in water quality, particularly in the Ramsar listed wetlands and Peel Harvey Estuary.

Murdoch University is underpinning Greening Australia's River Recovery Peel projects with science to assist in understanding inhibitors to current revegetation techniques, and to provide methods to increase the success of terrestrial, riparian, dampland and aquatic restoration works that can then be transferred to local landowners.

River Recovery work during the 2008-2011 period will continue to address river restoration, effective community engagement and where applicable will be underpinned strongly by science.

All projects within the Peel are supported by The Nature Conservancy’s Conservation Action Planning Tool.

What's Happening

Welcome to ALEC

No, we don’t have another new member of staff, but we do have a new office space for our staff in the Peel, housed in the newly developed Alcoa Landcare Education Centre, affectionately known as ALEC. Situated on Kaus Road just north of Yarloop this Alcoa Farmlands property is ideally located within easy distance of our many project sites and a base from which to deliver a range of community events and activities.

The River Recovery program continues to flow smoothly!

The River Recovery program was successful in securing additional funding to support onground works at both the Bancell Brook and Davis and Harper property plantings for 2010. The money received was used for all important site preparation and the purchase of 16,000 seedlings.

Martin von Kaschke, our Peel Operations Manager affirmed that “This funding has allowed us to double our planting area for these two projects and has enabled us to increase our seedlings numbers to almost 68,000 for River Recovery in the Peel in 2010. This is 20,000 more than was planted last year”

These particular projects are supported by the South West Catchments Council’s Coastal Environments Program; the Australian Government’s Caring for our Country program and Alcoa of Australia. 

River Recovery is Greening Australia's major initiative to rehabilitate key river reaches around Australia and is built on a long term vision. With 22 000km of Australian rivers in urgent need of repair*, Greening Australia's goal is to restore over 10 000 km of degraded rivers over the next 20 years.

Our work in the Peel is contributing towards this goal.

*National Land and Water Resources Audit 2005

National Tree Day in the Peel

Greening Australia and Alcoa employees and their families recently marked National Tree Day by planting 5,000 native seedlings in landscape restoration projects just north of Yarloop.

Two sites were selected for planting. Firstly, a site known as Bancell Brook, an important part of the larger Peel-Harvey BioLinks project which aims, in the longer term to create biodiversity links from the Indian Ocean to the Darling Scarp. Secondly around ALEC, including the construction of phase one of a ‘frog bog’. 

Amazingly, and so quickly after setting up the frog bog, the murmurings of the motorbike frog  (Litoria moorei) call could be heard. But alas, this was a false alarm and merely the faint sound of trail bikes in the distance..dang! (It’s not called a motorbike frog for no reason!!!)  A range of other activities were also at hand for the many children that attended the day, including the Lions Club Train taking regular chugs around the site with many an excited passenger on board; a farm tractor to sit on, calves to pet and feed as well as displays and Bush Detective educational activities.

The day was a huge success. Thanks to all for their enthusiasm and hard work. We couldn’t have done it without you.
National Tree Day for 2011 will be on Sunday July 31.  For more details visit here.

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