For full details click here -> 2020 January 11th Ptilotus monitoring
The scout camp is at the Park boundary in the Wartook Valley.
By way of background (a very personal view ) this activity follows up on survey work undertaken by the late Stan Parfett who was very interested in this plant. He used to have guards round the bushes because they were often grazed, This lead FOGGs to get funding (the late Sue McInnes was the driver of this) to install exclusion plots to measure the effects of grazing on native vegetation.
The Wartook Valley is infested with kangaroos, and the exclusion plots clearly showed that the understory in the Park nearby was overgrazed. Laharum Landcare group then toyed with the idea of kangaroo fences (in fact there is quite an extensive run of these against the Park) to try and reduce the feed available to the roos. This proved controversial as tourists are attracted to the sight of mobs of kangaroos in the valley…so nothing happened.
At various times, the idea of a kangaroo cull was mooted, but this clearly fell in the too hard basket.
So the day should promote some interesting discussion along these lines.
As well, the landscape nearby is dominated by granite intrusions, and resembles that of central Victoria with rounded granite boulders and a surprisingly open landscape