Agricultural
3 December, 2024
Cambooya Landcare Chair’s 2024 Report
Cambooya Landcare Association Chair Kate Reardon-Smith delivered her annual report at the organisation’s annual general meeting on 9 November. A Fossil on Farms Workshop and community barbecue were also held on the day.
“I present this report on behalf of the Cambooya Landcare executive: myself as Chair, Glenn Knight (our Secretary) and Hugh Reardon-Smith (our Treasurer).
2024 has been another quiet but productive year for the organisation.
This year we finalised the Umbiram Creek project, with the aid of funding from the Queensland Government Department of Communities, Housing and Digital Economy.
This project supported a group of local landholders to work together to better understand flood risk and ways to reduce the speed at which flood waters move through the Umbiram Creek system and the incidence and severity of flood break-outs.
The project proposal was developed by our dear friend Ian Whan in response to local concerns following severe flooding in February 2022 that resulted in major erosion and extensive soil loss at the lower end of Umbiram Creek near its confluence with Hodgson Creek.
Those who attended our AGM last year will recall that we ran a workshop at which Joseph Canning, from Hawkeye Access, demonstrated the mapping of elevations along the creek developed using drone-mounted technology.
The project enabled the initial data collection and planning phase, which has helped those involved implement flood mitigation works.
We hope to build on the initial success of the project, when funds can be accessed, by developing a larger project, involving additional landholders further up the Jimna Springs and Umbiram Creek subcatchments.
Our intrepid Lantana Busters team have continued their work, one morning a week, to remove a large lantana infestation in the Symes Thorpe woodland in Toowoomba.
They’ve previously worked on a range of sites around the region, from Violet Brodie Park at Greenmount to the Ramsay School block to the wildlife rescue centre at Murphy’s Creek.
Sadly, inventor extraordinaire and founding father of the group, Euan McLean passed away a couple of months ago.
Euan was passionate about dealing with lantana without the use of chemicals, and invented a number of highly effective tools, including ‘root blade’ and ‘tower power’.
We’ve brought along an example of the root blade and invite anyone interested in ordering one to let us know, as we’ll be ordering a new batch early next year.
We have also continued to operate the Felton weather station, which this year was supported by the Felton Hall Association, for which we are very grateful.
Phoning the weather station on 4695 8237 will provide information on current air temperature, relative humidity, average wind speed for the last 15 minutes, total rain today and yesterday.
In terms of new projects, we’ve been successful again in obtaining funds through the Toowoomba Region Community Grants program.
Last year, a TRC environmental grant allowed us to purchase ten high-tech 3-D printed nest boxes, which are installed in trees on the University of Southern Queensland’s Toowoomba campus for environmental and teaching purposes.
Recently, we’ve been awarded three further TRC grants for new projects.
These include today’s workshop presented by Ian and Gilbert; a project that will allow us to engage Indigenous burning to manage Johnson grass and promote endangered native species such as the Austral cornflower on the Cambooya grassland reserve, and a community garden project on the vacant block adjacent to the landcare office in Cambooya, which we own. Keep an eye on the OOSN for news about these in the new year.
Finally, the issue of feral pigs doesn’t go away and numbers appear to have built to high levels locally with the good rainfall conditions and proliferation of cover.
While we won’t be looking to run another helicopter
shoot, due to the complexity of delivery, we are still keen to implement a trial of the Hoggone feral pig control technologies developed by ACTA - Animal Control Technologies (Australia), so will be looking for opportunities to develop a project around this – bearing in mind that pig control efforts are more likely to have a lasting impact where 80% or more of the population can be removed through coordinated control measures.
This is a tall ask under the current good breeding conditions, but it would be valuable to get an estimate of the numbers people are seeing as this will aid us in seeking funding.
You are all invited to monitor pig numbers on your place and let us know numbers and locations.
Once again, thank you all for your support.
If you aren’t currently on our email list, please talk to Glenn or email us at cambooylandcare@gmail.com.
Monthly meetings are held at the Cambooya landcare office in Eton Street on the second Monday of each month and we look forward to seeing you there.
- Kate Reardon-Smith, Chair
