In late June, Senior Project Officers Dr Adam Cisterne and Paige Green joined the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre for a site visit to Windsong near Little Swanport. Windsong is a privately owned property handed back to the Aboriginal community in 2019. This beautiful undeveloped property is prime Swift Parrot habitat, boasting tall eucalypts, wattles and with a gentle river running through it.
‘It was a privilege to walk in the footsteps of the TAC while we traversed the property and saw its beauty, its need for weed management and its connection to Aboriginal heritage.’ Paige Green.
However, a large section at the edge of the ~110 ha property has been overrun with gorse – a highly invasive and rampant weed. NRM South will be working with the TAC to control this infestation, helping to both improve the overall habitat for Swift Parrots and heal Country for the benefit of the Aboriginal community.
This first site visit was a walk and talk with the TAC, getting a sense of the scale of the issue, discussing control options, bush tucker, priorities around looking after Country, Tasmanian Aboriginal history and some of the problems that the TAC are having at their other properties (weeds, equipment needs and the destruction of middens on the West Coast).
Next steps will involve preliminary weed control work, scheduled for the spring/summer season. Ongoing control work is planned over the coming years alongside infrastructure improvements to the site. The TAC has years of collective experience in weed control. They have mapped every weed on the property and have a plan of action for controlling them over the next four years.
Planned activities at this site form part of a larger Australian Government funded project to protect Swift Parrots, a critically endangered species that migrates annually to Tasmania from mainland Australia to breed over the spring and summer months.
This project is funded by the Australian Government’s Natural Heritage Trust and delivered by NRM South, a member of the Regional Delivery Panel.