Mike Stevens, Acting Ranger in Charge
On Friday 12th June, Grampians National Park staff celebrated the official end of the fire recovery program from January 2006 to July 2009 with a dinner to acknowledge the outsanding efforts of the recovery crews and staff. The massive recovery effort saw approximately a $4.5 million program implemented over the 3 years. The massive list included assessing 4120 trees, 473 km of road and track, 100 signs, 8 toilet blocks, 1 house, 13 park furniture, and countless numbers of steps to name but a few of the assets reconstructed. The program has also achieved fox poison baiting across almost 200,000 hectares, the reintroduction of the critically endangered Brush-tailed Rock-wallaby and establishment of the Grampians Fire and Fauna research project with Deakin University.
The very last piece of the fire recovery puzzle is currently being completed with final works being carried out on the Zumsteins to McKenzie Falls walk over the coming months.
The Grampians National Park will be turning 25 on 1st July this year. To mark the milestone, members of the Friends of the Grampians-Gariwerd and the wider community are invited to join park staff in a walk from the Wonderland Carpark to the Pinnacle and back to Halls Gap via the Mackeys Peak loop track that will be opened on the day. People are advised to meet at the carpark at a time yet to be decided and need to arrange their own shuttles from Halls Gap back to the Wonderland carpark.
Brush-tailed Rock-wallabies continue to do well at their release site. Seven individuals of the original ten animal are remaining with monitoring indicating all animals fit, active and having made themselves at home. The pouch young that was released still remains as elusive as ever with no confirmed sighting or photograph of the animal yet. A trapping trip over summer confirmed that the little pouch young was indeed a female so she will be a vital little addition to the colony when mature.
A happy birthday to FOGG’s from all at Parks Victoria in recognition of your recent 25th birthday milestone. Halls Gap staff are enthusiastic about the next 25 years working together with the inclusion of a volunteers headquarters soon to be constructed at the National Parks office at Halls Gap to mark the occassion. This shared resource will provide immense benefit to the park by providing a meeting and networking hub for FOGG’s and other volunteers and especially a learning centre for the great number of research students that come through our doors.
I would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge the outstanding support over the past 3 years that the Parks Victoria staff have received from FOGG’s during the fire recovery program. Although many challenges have been presented to park management it has been with the support of the community that much work has been able to be achieved. I trust that we all agree that the reconstruction effort will put us in good stead for the future with hard wearing, durable sites that will be sustainable in our icon park for many years to come.