This is very encouraging to have new hands to continue the great progress achieved over the past 25 years in the eradication of weeds on the island.
The weather for the week was good, and allowed plenty of weeding and exploration walks to discover the Island’s flora and fauna.
A bonus this week was the Friends had sponsored Australian Museum scientist Dr Chris Reid to attend and carry out a Citizen Science project with beetle monitoring. This is the first monitoring for invertebrates post rodent eradication, and as the beetles are a key indicator group, a very important study to document the recovery of wildlife post rodent eradication. Lord Howe Island has 535 beetle species, and about 330 of these are endemic. The surveys focused on the macro beetles 10mm or more in length. Prior to the rodent eradication Chris had been on two trips to carry out pre-eradication surveys as baselines for monitoring recovery. During the weeding week Chris ran daytime and night time surveys with Friends members as well as his own solo surveys. The surveys brought up some surprising results; a scientific paper is being prepared on one of the key discoveries, and a Technical Report for Australian Museum on the week surveys as whole.
The weeding effort was spread over a few areas; particularly with allow up on areas already started on previous trips. In Stevens Reserve a team tackled the weeds in the area where a large camphor laurel had been cut down. We revisited the North Blinky Beach site to continue on the eventual eradication of the garden escape sweet pea. Several sessions were at the site behind Middle Beach assisting the forest restore itself by removing weedy species such as Cape gooseberry, palm grass; and freeing native tree saplings from the vines smothering them. This method, repeated each weeding trip is proving effective, and the recovery of the native forest is very visible after just a couple of years.
Probably the highlight of the weeding days was on Monday when the group were ferried out to Blackburn Island to assist the LHI Board staff with the reforestation of a large area commenced a few years ago. (the native forest was denuded a hundred years ago by goats, and most of the island is covered in introduced Rhodes grass.) Some of the work was removing grass and weeds from inside and around the tree guards of seedlings planted last year. Other duties were digging holes and planting of more seedling stock, and assembling wind guards to go around each tree planted – a mix of Sallywood, Bullybush, Hopwood, Greybark, Maulwood and Banyan. Lunch break was taken sitting on the pebble beach, enjoying the warm sunny day.
The group also carried out some community activities, on one day splitting into three groups to tackle three areas where assistance was needed. One group was doing a follow up on a problem Plumbago shrub taking over vegetatively on the lease of Gai Wilson, beyond one person’s efforts to remove it. Another group assisted leaseholder Jack Shick in planting out a few hundred native seedlings in an area he is converting from grazing paddock back to native forest. It is very encouraging seeing such a large-scale project being undertaken privately, and all were very glad to assist Jack, and look forward to seeing the growth of this forest. A third group went to the museum and helped clean the two galleries, which had accumulated a lot of dust following internal construction work with new displays in the history gallery.
The group afternoon activities were varied, with walks to Transit Hill, Malabar and Boat Harbour. An enjoyable day was a lunchtime BBQ at Ned’s Beach followed by a low tide reef walk in beautiful winter sunshine. As usual, people were captivated by the variety of marine creatures to be seen in such a small area. Five of the group who were all new members were determined to tackle the Island’s highest mountain – Mount Gower. They spent the day with guide Jack Shick; all made the ascent and descent safely and thoroughly enjoyed the adventure. The group enjoyed several lectures at the museum by Ian, and had a bonus lecture by two young students from Victoria University Wellington New Zealand. Their study is on the Elkhorn fern and could be a ground breaking study – we will report on their findings in future newsletters.
