Under the spotlight: our Canberra Bush Crew

Canberra’s Bush Crew started in mid-2011 with a small project to collect soil cores from a wetland in Gungahlin, ACT. Find out how they’ve got on since then.

The aim of that first project was to determine which species of macrophyte – aquatic plants that are big enough to be seen by the naked eye – were present in the soil. Any seeds found were germinated and grown to a size where ‘good’ species could be returned to the wetland during its reconstruction stage.

The Bush Crew at that stage wasn’t much of a crew – consisting solely of Haydn Burgess, one our Project Managers. But since then the Bush Crew has grown into a team, offering a diverse range of on-ground conservation activities from specialised weed control to habitat enhancement.

The strength of Bush Crew’s success is the ability to provide clients with sound technical advice and deliver high quality environmental services with successful outcomes.

Here’s a snapshot of our projects to date:

• Aquatic macrophyte plantings around Lake Burley Griffin as part of the National Capital Authority’s trials to investigate options for improving water quality.
• Riparian plantings along various sections of the Molonglo River as part of the ACT Government’s willow removal program.
• Site preparation and tubestock plantings on rural properties to support our regional projects and assist landowners.
• Tubestock planting and hand seeding for habitat enhancement and connectivity within the ACT Parks and Conservation Service reserve estate.
• Quarry rehabilitation, including weed control, planting, hand seeding and machine direct seeding.
• Natural Temperate Grassland species and habitat enhancement plantings to improve habitat for threatened species such as the Grassland Earless Dragon (Tympanocryptis pinguicolla), Pink-Tailed Worm-Lizard, (Aprasia parapulchella) and enhancing populations of the Button Wrinklewort (Rutidosis leptorrhynchoides), also a threatened species.

Post construction site rehabilitation, including planting a corridor of macrophytes and grasses through a grassland/wetland after the area was disturbed by an electrical cable upgrade.

What’s next?

Haydn has recently handed over Bush Crew Coordination to Ben Hanrahan, so that he can concentrate on other project work such as alpine weed detection and Rivers of Carbon to rural landowners across the region.

The Bush Crew now comprises a Coordinator (Ben) plus 10 casual team members including two team leaders and two people who have graduated from Green Army teams from Crookwell and Queanbeyan respectively. This planting season has started off on a busy note which will continue through to September.

The Bush Crew are now a core business unit of our operations and we look forward to developing our range of Bush Crew services in the Canberra region.

Want to learn more about our Bush Crew? Get in touch.

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