April 13th will mark the commencement of the Grampians first Green Army team working to remove satellite populations of Sallow Wattle in the park, led by supervisor Joshua Brown. The group of 10 is made up of a supervisor and 9 young locals who will be working in the park for 6 months and accessing isolated areas in the park to eradicate the introduced plant species. The aim is to work on individual populations of the weed close to areas such as the Wartook Basin to keep it from spreading further into our waterways and becoming much more difficult to track and control.
As well as working on Sallow Wattle removal the group will be helping to create, install and monitor nest boxes in our local reserves where Brush-tailed Phascogales and Squirrel Gliders have recently been detected by the Hamilton Field Naturalists.
This group will be an excellent asset and hopefully we will see a large improvement in the extent of Sallow Wattle populations in our National Park.
Caity O’Reilly and Josh Brown