FriendsNET newsletter - Number 91

Number 91 May 2015 email: friendsvic@hotmail.com New website: http://vnpa.org.au/page/volunteer/victorian-environment-friends-network From your Network Convener Ray Radford Parks & Reserves Trust Fund: Where does our money go?

Victorian National Parks could be being deprived of their rightful share of public money from the Parks & Reserves Trust Fund.

This fund gets its income from the ‘Parks Charge’ on most Melbourne households through the water bills. Some of this money goes to manage our National Parks through Parks Victoria, making up over 38% of its budget. Although the income from the Fund has been over $153 million, its income or expenditure is not reported in one easily accessible report.

In order to gain access to this information, VEFN had to file a Freedom of Information request. Thanks to fellow VEFN Committee member, Robert Bender, for obtaining this information and for his comprehensive analysis of the data.

It is outrageous that a FOI is needed to find out how such a large amount of public revenue is spent. The expenditure figures reveal that, while the total amount of money collected by the parks charge has grown by around 45% in real terms since 1999, revenue to Parks Victoria has only grown by 12.7%. This has meant that the proportion of funding to Parks Victoria has dropped from 74% of revenue in 1999 to 59% in 2014. This is at a time that Parks Victoria funding has been so badly cut that it has less staff than when it was established in 1996, even though the park estate has grown dramatically.

Instead, the share of funding has increased to other organisations, such as Victorian Zoos, Royal Botanic Gardens and the Shrine of Remembrance. While these are worthy organisations, I argue that our National Parks are more important and the fund was originally established to provide funding for Melbourne’s metropolitan parks. Yet there’s even a further problem with the lack of transparency of this fund: it’s inequitable. The Parks Charge is only paid by areas serviced by the old Melbourne & Metropolitan Board of Works in 1996 (see Map 1 – back page), while money from the fund has to be spent within the metropolitan area – which is actually much larger (see Map 2). This is not only unfair, it is 20 years out of date and huge new suburbs have been established since then, expanding the metropolitan area considerably. National Parks in the rest of the state are funded by Victorian Government consolidated revenue. Again, it was not easy to obtain this information and I thank Matt Ruchel, Executive Director of the Victorian

National Parks Association, for his brilliant detective work.

The growing population and expanding metropolitan area, mean that our parks and reserves are under increasing pressure for funding. However, the total cost of the park estate, around 17% of the state, is less than 0.6 % of total state government expenditure. Any increase would either have to come from consolidated revenue, or else the state government could consider increasing the amount of money generated from the existing Parks Charge, or expanding its collection area.

What should be done?

Firstly, I believe that the Parks & Reserves Trust Fund should publish Annual Reports, which should include maps of the Parks Charge collection and expenditure areas. This is an easy thing to do and it should start from July this year Secondly, I think that there should be an independent review of the Trust’s funding arrangements. Such a review should consider the amount and the scope of the Parks Charge. It needs to answer why only some properties in the Melbourne metropolitan area pay the charge and others do not. (In some cases one side of a road, such as part of Dandenong-Hastings Rd, is in the collection area, while the other side is not.) It should also take account of the expanded metropolitan area since 1996 and perhaps consider expanding the Park Charge over the whole of Victoria. (See more on page 3)

Who’s your Best Friend for 2015?

Please consider nominating at least one hard-working person in your group for a 2015 Best Friend Award. This is more significant than most awards, as it involves recognition by one’s peers rather than by an outside panel of judges. The Award is also not limited to only one “winner.”

To qualify for the Best Friend Award, a person needs to have made an outstanding contribution through exceptional dedication as a Friend. This will usually involve constant honorary involvement in the work of the group for at least ten years. The nominee doesn’t have to be of high profile or an office bearer, but the contribution must be outstanding and involve exceptional dedication over a long period. It will need to be accompanied by three references, one of which should be from the managing organisation or Council.

Nominations are considered by an independent panel of three, appointed by the Friends Network Committee and Awards are made on its recommendation. The Award is in the form of a certificate, which may be presented at a Friends Network or Group function at the option of the Group. There are bound to be people in your group who

qualify, so send in your nominations by post to: VEFN, c/o VNPA, Level 3, 60 Leicester St Carlton 3053, or email to friendsvic@hotmail.com before Friday 31 July.

flourished as fox density declined inside their predatorproof fence

Cranbourne Friends’ day, 2 May Our oneday event attracted about 45 people from a wide range of Friends groups.

Laura had organized a fine program, starting with Ray Radford’s introduction.

Then we heard John Arnott, horticultural manager of the RBGC, who delivered a Powerpoint on the history and delights of the gardens, an old army training ground, then sand-mining quarry, that has been reconfigured several times since proclamation as a botanic garden in 1969. Now a showcase of native flora, and of what can be done to develop Australian domestic gardens that are beautiful and also fauna-friendly, on the reclaimed sand-mining scar.

Fire has been used to study responses of fire-sensitive and insensitive flora and manage a mosaic of frequently and infrequently burned areas, depending on how species respond. The city of Casey is just east of the RBGC and expected to grow from a human population of 220,000 to 380,000 in the next 5 years, posing a very large challenge to the gardens. Their role in public education was highlighted – one local magazine promoted Cape-weed as a garden ornamental! They are reaching out into the community via Council, building developers and Friends groups to educate about the value of conserving flora and fauna and using housing as an opportunity to establish indigenous flora.

John then led half the group on a walk around parts of the property, discussing research projects (e.g. into the response of the Brachyscome daisy genus, most species of

He showed slides of pre-settlement vegetation extent and how alarmingly depleted it has become as Melbourne has grown, so the RBGC is now a small remnant surrounded by suburbs, of the early planting by the SGAP of Protea species.

This photo shows how isolated the RBGC has become as suburbs have spread. The red dot with the green arrow pointing to it is the RBGC, surrounded by almost barren grey suburbs. Nearest green remnant woodland is well to the north He talked of the vegetation classes found there, the bandicoots, bryophytes and fungi and the astonishing diversity of orchids – 46 species – and of fauna: reptiles, frogs, birds, mammals. The feral pests include the usual cats, foxes, rabbits, and common myna. A chart of fox counts pre- and post-control efforts preceded one of bandicoots, which

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which are alpine, to a world 4 warmer and drier), and into a shrubby-meadow home garden concept, the problems of wallaby browse, the theme of water scarcity and abundance in various patches of the RBG, and of landscape design taking precedence over setting up a collection of plants Parallel with John’s guided

walk around a section of the RBG, Luis Mata, a recently graduated PhD entomologist, took sweep nets to collect insects and spiders for the group to examine and learn about.

years of the series. There has been a public perception that the PV budget decreased substantially during the reign of the Baillieu/Napthine government. This chart shows that is just what happened.

There were also talks on bats and bandicoots – more on those next issue. The day was nicely advertised on an Eco-Surveys Facebook page.

Brown Bandicoot & wildlife corridor At our Cranbourne day, Sarah Maclagan presented her research into the population of bandicoots along the roads and drainage lines east of the RBGC, and the rapid shrinkage of their distribution as suburbs expanded. The last populations are spread out near the RBGC, inside the newly expanded Urban Growth Boundary, so most of their remaining habitat is scheduled for quite dense housing developments very soon.

Environment Justice Australia, and the Green Wedges Coalition, are mounting a legal case to modify the approval for suburban development to properly protect the bandicoot habitat, to go to the Federal Court, which is very expensive.

Anybody prepared to donate contributions to this large cost should contact EJA at admin@envirojustice.org.au

Parks and Reserves Trust 1999-2014 A Freedom of Information request for details of the Park Rate collected by the Victorian government, and of how it is distributed each year, was accepted, so we now have 14 years’ data for analysis, to learn how much there is to allocate and who gets what. The money is collected by the regional water authorities from properties within the 1996 urban growth boundary, and must be spent within metropolitan Melbourne. It has never been routinely published, although it amounts to a very large bag of money, growing from $69.5m. in 1999-0 to $153.3m. in 2013-4, a growth of 120%, more than double.

During that time the Consumer Price Index rose by 51.6%, and when this inflation of price levels is removed from the Park Rate growth, the remaining increase is to 45.5%. So this has been the “real” growth in the Trust revenue over 15 years. If all its beneficiaries received a 45.5% increase in their allocations, this would have preserved the relative support for various organisations as it was in 1999-0

What has happened to the way this money is distributed?

On the next chart the blue line shows the annual change in Trust “real” revenue and the red line shows the change in the “real” allocation to Parks Victoria. This languished consistently to 2006-7, and since then grew by about 23% to 2011-2 but declined fairly markedly over the last two

Next issue: where was the money diverted to?

LandCare awards 2015 now open Nominations are welcome through to 31 May for this year’s awards in 9 categories (individuals, groups, co-ordinators, juniors, indigenous groups etc.) plus 3 awards involving cash prizes or study fellowships (closing date 21 June).

The website explains very clearly how to nominate and the rules and conditions, with a user-friendly nomination form.

The Victorian end of the award scheme is managed by Yvonne Ryczkowski of DELWP https://eaward.com.au/2015/landcareawards/newentry/about.php

Tree canopy cover in cities: 202020 The Institute of Sustainable Futures and its partner University of Technology Sydney have conducted a major nationwide study of urban tree canopy cover in 7 capital cities, and the majority of municipal sub-cities within those metropolitan areas. It is presented in several reports, one of which is a 30-page document: Where are all the trees?

An analysis of tree canopy cover in urban Australia.

It surveyed 139 Local Government Areas (LGAs) in Australia, of which 34 are in Victoria. They amount to 0.8% of the continent’s land surface but hold 68% of its human population. Trees and other plants keep cities cooler, improve the breathability of air, reduce the impact of extreme weather. The national averages for urban land

use are: grass and bare ground 47%, tree canopy 39%, shrubs 6%, hard surface 8%. On a suburban basis, and including several rural cities, the range of tree canopy cover was from 79% down to 3%.

As the chart shows, Melbourne has the least tree canopy of the 7 capitals studied, less than a quarter of the percentage found in Hobart, though Brisbane’s is inflated by its definition of urban boundary including a large rural compon –ent – it reduces to 16.3% if suburbanized areas only are measured. The proportion of hard-surfaced land to tree canopy varies very widely within any city – canopy cover varying from 76% to 10%, and hard surface varying from 31% to under 20% within ACT for example.

They used a software package, iTree Canopy, to evaluate several aspects of urban forest, and classified land use into four categories: hard surface, tree, shrubs and grass/ bare ground, with a set of definitional characteristics of each.

City of Sydney has 69% hard surface and 13% grass and bare ground, so its Green Roofs and Walls program is its big hope for change. Canopy cover in the suburbs varies from 59% to 12%. In Queensland, Cairns is the nation’s most treed city with 79% canopy.

The headlines on Victoria are: Tree canopy rates could be vastly improved in metropolitan Victoria, and The vast majority of tree canopy in Melbourne is found on public land. 19 of 34 LGAs had canopy cover under 20%. City of Melbourne has 13%, 2/3 of it on public land.

There is a big divide within Melbourne, with the western suburbs (brown/red) all under 10% tree cover, many bayside suburbs (tan) under 20%, some middle suburbs (light green) under 40%, Nillumbik and Manningham (bright green) under 50% and the greenest area (Yarra Ranges) having much rural park and public land.

The map of the inner and middle suburbs shows a strong divide between the eastern and western suburbs, along Darebin Creek.

The major report from which the popular edition was extracted is Benchmarking Australia’s Urban Tree Canopy the research team being Brent Jacobs, Candice Delaney, and Nicholas Mikhailovich.

Melbourne overall is 50% grass and bare ground, 34% trees, 4% shrubs and 12% hard surface. When tree canopy is analysed by LGA, the range is 77% (Yarra Ranges) down to 3% (Wyndham) so there are many big challenges to raise these percentages to figures that will help reduce the Urban Heat Island effect significantly.

Wyndham, Hume and Melton have grass/bare ground of over 77%.

There are similar charts and statistics for each capital, though Victoria’s range of variability is the widest by quite a large margin. Opportunities for establishing more trees vary in proportion to the amount of grass and bare ground, which means mainly in the western suburbs (green columns), which were originally grasslands anyway, some of the seaside suburbs (blue), the rural cities (orange) and the far outer suburbs (grey), which are fringed by farm paddocks. Melton (26) and Wyndham (13.5) have been left off this chart, as they dwarf everything else. The far right column for Hume shows that municipality has ten times the area under grass or bare than is covered by tree canopy, while the Stonnington one at far left shows it has about half the area of bare ground compared with tree canopy. This has big effects on opportunities to plant more trees. Much of what Friends groups do is re-establishing lost tree canopy and shrubs, so this report’s analysis and tools (iTree) are is very relevant to planning the tasks facing Friends. http://202020vision.com.au/media/7141/finalreport_140930.pdf

to it. It’s a pointer to the face that what looks like politicians’ lack of courage or principle may sometimes be more complicated than it seems. The problem starts when the media magnify opposing views, and frame them in a way calculated to appeal to a wider audience: in such a campaign, the apathetic approval of many in the majority can be easily overwhelmed.

That’s why, for example, even though over 70 per cent of people support the idea in opinion polls, protecting native forests is so difficult to do in practice. Once they start getting fed emotive stories about the threat of forestry workers losing their jobs, companies closing down, and rural townships in jeopardy, many in the majority change their minds or become confused. What was firm support becomes inflammable opposition or, at the very least, a disinclination to take the matter any further. This means that, if politicians choose to persist with what they believe is the right policy, and to make the issue a major policy battle, they run the risk that not only will opponents be antagonized, but that many middle-ground voters will be turned off by the attention given to what they now see as a problem of marginal importance., and will thus lose faith in the government’s priorities. This, in turn, pressures politicians into positioning themselves with low-risk, default policy options, relying on their opponents’ negative attributes to win.”

Tanner attributes nearly all the negative phenomena he describes to the deterioration in journalism, with serious reporting disappearing to be replaced by entertainment and pandering to the stereotypes and prejudices of the media audience/readership. It is a most interesting book, with many useful lessons for organisations wishing to push what they believe is sensible, evidence-based policy.

On a cautionary note, the report does not go into the context of particular landscapes or patches of land. Decisions on where to plant trees, shrubs and understory, and which ones to plant, should sensitively consider not only human need, but the native land form and biodiversity of the area. For example, much of Western greater Melbourne (including LGAs like Hume, Melton and Wyndham) consisted of basaltic plains habitat, including patches of land without trees and a rich, distinctive flora of grasses.

What is planted, restored or protected here should be different from forested areas in Melbourne’s southeast. (Green is the Volcanic Plains)

Mammal extinctions: USA & Australia At a Field Naturalists’ seminar in Melbourne on 28 Feb. Dr John Woinarski, lead author of the recent Mammal Action Plan 2014, put up two slides on extinction rates. The one for Australia shows that for every decade from 1800 to now there has been about 1 or 2 mammal species go extinct, with worse rates in 1890s and 1940s. It is not a phenomenon of “less enlightened times” and continues despite a very large conservation effort in recent decades.

Lindsay Tanner on forest protection Tanner was a very senior Minister in the Rudd government from 2007-10, leaving politics at the 2010 election. He then published Sideshow: dumbing down democracy, a scathing analysis of the sick distortions of reporting that affect the political arena, with serious treatment of political issues being almost totally replaced by entertainment stories. In a chapter on how and why politicians defend themselves against constant attack from journalists keen to get negative stories about government failings, he has a comment about “an apparent paradox: why it can be so hard to advance a policy with clear majority support in the community when there is a vociferous minority opposition

By contrast, North America was settled by Europeans from th the late 16 century and there are now 350 million humans there, 15 times the number in Australia, which is about the same size as USA. But in over 400 years only one mammal – the sea mink that used to live along the Atlantic coast

– has become extinct, whereas Australia has lost probably 33 species, 8 of them in my lifetime since the late 1940s. A further 56 terrestrial mammals are threatened – 20% of the endemics – and yet another 52 species are “near threatened” – another 20%. Since 1992, 39 species have moved into a worse category and 11 into a better one. The major cause of declines and extinctions has been introduced predators, especially feral cats and foxes.

Woinarski offered some suggestions for the future: • We are not fitting well into this land and need to reassess what it means to live in this country, take more responsibility for our custodianship of fauna • We are an affluent nation and can afford to take action to prevent further extinctions.

• The effort being made to now is very inadequate to deal with deeply entrenched threats to fauna survival.

• The most effective action is broad-scale control of feral cats and foxes.

• We humans are too disconnected from the natural world and need a greater connection with and understanding of our wildlife.

• We should recognise the success stories and learn from them.

• For all the recent extinctions, no person or authority has accepted any accountability or shared responsibility for the loss of the species.

• We need far more effective monitoring of biodiversity and evaluation of the effectiveness of management.

Bill Jackson, CEO of PV, resigns Rewritten from The Weekly Times, Chris McLennan, 6/3 Jackson was appointed as CEO in 2010 and announced he will finish up on 30 June. He said in the press release that he’s proud of his achievements over a very challenging time. The PV board chairman, Andrew Fairley, was very positive about Jackson’s job in leading and reforming the organization, leaving a fine legacy.

amenity and significance. From Labor’s policy manifesto

EJA and the Riverkeepers combined to conduct this forum as the Planning Minister, Richard Wynne, recently issued a statement of intention about the proposed legislation, and they would like to ensure it has real power and leads to real action.

On Monday, Planning Minister Richard Wynne said the legislation was critical and couldn't be rushed. But he also said interim controls would be put in place "so the Yarra River can be protected while community consultation and work on this landmark legislation progresses. Part of our commitment is making sure the community has a chance to have their say on this important legislation," Mr Wynne said. "All Melburnians know the Yarra and we want all Melburnians to have a voice." Clay Lucas The Age 17 Mar. About 80 people attended the forum, facilitated by Russell Fisher, with a panel of Andrew Kelly (Yarra Riverkeeper), Nicola Rivers (EJA), Josh Griffiths (Cesar, doing platypus monitoring on Melbourne’s waterways), Amanda Stone (Yarra councillor), Matt Stewart (Yarra Swimming Co.)

Yarra Protection forum: 18 March In the lead-up to last November’s election, the Yarra Riverkeepers and Environment Justice Australia lobbied major parties about protection of the Yarra from over-development and from environmental degradation. The Liberal party showed no interest, but Labor promised a Yarra Protection Act to co-ordinate management of the many issues affecting water quality, flora and fauna and planning controls over riverside land.

Labor will introduce a Yarra River Protection Act to guard the river corridor from inappropriate development. A new trust will develop standardised planning controls for the Yarra and work with agencies to promote the river’s

Age reader’s photo of Yarra rubbish Kelly said the pressure to maintain the Urban Growth Boundary is leading to proposals for infill building estates, many very close to riverbanks, which may absorb much of the “natural capital” of riverscapes. At present, planning authority over various aspects of Melbourne’s segment of the Yarra are spread over 8 Councils and 12 other government bodies including EPA, Port Phillip & Westernport CMA, Parks Vic., Places Vic., Office of Aboriginal Affairs, Transport Safety Vic., Dept. of Environment, Port of Melbourne, Melbourne Water and several water corporations.

The major issues are overdevelopment (poor setback, poor height controls, etc.) nature being stressed (by weeds, exotic fish and foxes), and poor water quality (very variable from quite clear at Warrandyte to toxic near Prahran.

Rivers said the forum was called as the new government’s plan for a Protection Act should not be passively awaited by the community, but actively contributed to, to ensure it is not hijacked by vested interests.

Griffiths talked of his monitoring of platypus showing major decline in numbers in most streams, partly due to the long drought but also to the stresses we place on the river.

Platypus need permanent water, erosion control, healthy populations of invertebrate food items and intact banks.

The underlying problem is the enormous increase in nonporous surfaces in roads, houses, commercial buildings, car parks, which cause unnatural runoff surges after rain, bring many pollutants off roads, scouring of stream beds, and setting of illegal yabby traps which drown platypus.

Catchment-scale thinking is needed as many problems start many kilometres from degradation sites.

Fisher led a group interview of the panel, then opened up to questions and contributions from the audience: on the challenges facing the river, the achievements of Melbourne Water and multitudes of little volunteer groups, and what goals might be reasonable: should the Yarra be safe for swimming? Or mainly healthy for other fauna species?

Should car parks have more permeable surfaces? What powers should the proposed Trust have? How can we control the big spikes in turbidity after major rain events? (the new Northern Sewer Main led to a dramatic drop in turbid spikes in the Merri and Darebin creeks from 5 years ago). Jason Alexandra (former Earthwatch CEO) said a world survey of other efforts to protect rivers is essential – many authorities and laws have yielded nothing of value, while the French authority has created powerful regulatory agencies that enforce planning rules strongly.

Figure 1 Panel: Stewart, Stone, Kelly Victoria should not be starting from scratch, but investigating what has worked overseas. http://www.therrc.co.uk/RESTORE/October2012_France/F rench_Water_and_River_Management_System.pdf He also mentioned Marion Stoddart’s work in Canada as shown in the documentary film The Work of 1000 – she took on the challenge of restoring a degraded river which needed multi-agency co-operation and achieved it.

One proposal strongly supported was the Great Forest National Park that both major parties declined to commit to pre-election.

Several panels had been set up to which the audience were invited to pin post-it notes to elaborate a vision for a restored river, discuss the challenges and obstaces facing the process, and describe what the community might be saying about their reclaimed river. All these are to be assembled by EJA and circulated to stimulate ongoing public discussion.

Sarah Firth was employed to develop a graphic summary of the discussion as it progressed, all now published on the EJA website www.envirojustice.org.au

Marion Stoddart: The Work of 1000 There is a 30-minute DVD that can be purchased online chronicling the story of restoration of the Nashua River in Massachusetts USA, a long-term project led by Marion Stoddart, who is now a folk-hero in conservation circles.

She was born in 1928 so is now 87. She moved from Nevada to Massachusetts with her husband in the 1950s.

In the 1960s, with much turbulence from the Civil Rights and anti-Vietnam war protests, Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring started many movements of environmental cleanup and restoration including a federal Clean Water Act and much monitoring of polluted rivers. The Stoddarts settled in the little village of Groton, and Marion looked for some challenge to occupy her while her husband was kept busy with his professional career.

She decided to tackle restoration of the Nashua river which, like many rivers had deteriorated with postwar industrial development. There were many paper and paint factories along its banks, so it changed colour daily, depending on which dye the factories dumped in their waste streams. Raw sewage was dumped into it routinely.

involved ecologists in monitoring the return of wildlife: mink, otter, moose, deer, turtles, snakes, ducks, geese, osprey. Her children (now in their 40s) discuss home life in a household bursting with petitions, mimeograph machine, endless letter-writing, volunteer committees, and a chronically over-committed mother heading the Nashua River Watershed Association, a large non-profit org. She was seen to be crazy and threatening jobs so received death threats, having to lobby hard in industrial towns to get factory workers to see that a clean river was worth pursuing and threatened, not the industries, but only their polluting practices. By the mid-1970s she had achieved her big challenge and went on to tackle another, organizing a tour group for older women, touring 50 countries with local naturalists to interpret the local issues and ecology. It is an inspirational story of what an ordinary citizen can achieve with a commitment to a large long-term project, turning around public opinion and finishing as a local hero.

www.workof1000.com The Nashua in a yellow phase after the paper factory dumped yellow dye via their waste pipes.

With initial political activism training via the Women Voters Association, Stoddart gathered petition signatures, organized riverside clean-ups of car tyres, shopping trolleys, bottles and discarded building timber, wrote stories for newspapers and journals, and managed a meeting with the State Governor, presenting him with a bottle of sludge from the Nashua, to show him what the challenge was, surround -ed by journalists and photographers, to get maximum publicity from the event. She organized and spoke at many meetings of factory workers to reassure them that their jobs were not under threat.

She harassed the mayor of nearby Fitchburg to issue bonds to construct a waste treatment plant, which was eventually successful, aiming long-term at a swimmable river, lobbied successfully for a state Clean Water Act, then for city councils to get serious about waste treatment all along the river, organized school canoe excursions and

Blackburn Creeklands This group publishes a monthly newsletter as a Wordpress website. It has embedded maps of work sites (Melway 47 H12), accounts of recent Council work, a bird survey (with hyperlink to the complete results), a photo-point project for a time series of photos showing improvements achieved, notices of working bees, excellent photos of completed work, and the widespread practice of “plant of the month” and “weed of the month” with links to earlier newsletters.

A very impressive web project. They work closely with Wyndham Council and usually have a Council employee working with them. A very constructive relationship. https://blackburncreeklands.wordpress.com/2015/04/30/pa rk-news-april-2015/

F o Skeleton Creek & Altona Wetlands

This group produces a newsletter as a pdf file, headed by a map of the area and committee contacts. Their April newsletter reports the April and March working bees, spreading mulch (with much support from Hobson’s Bay Council) and planting at Point Cook (Poa grases and herbs, with help from the Wyndham Council water truck) with excellent photos of work teams and sites. And a delightful story of finding an Eastern Long-neck Turtle nest hatching and attempt to rescue some hatchlings – not just a Good Deed, but a learning opportunity. It finishes up with a 2015 work calendar and a hyperlink to their Facebook page and to a Hobson’s Bay fact sheet on freshwater turtles. https://www.facebook.com/friendsofskeletoncreek

Low carbon lifestyles: Livewell Do you want to join a group that can help you reduce your carbon emissions? Livewell Clusters is a new action research project that brings people together as ‘Decarb’ groups – groups of 6-12 people who meet monthly for about 6 months and help each other reduce their carbon footprints.

Livewell has a website – at www.livewell.net.au – and it can arrange workshops on topics of interest for participants. The evidence is clear that we can have a low – and eventually zero – carbon footprint without sacrificing our wellbeing.

For further on how you can form or join a Decarb group, email Rob Salter at rob@livewell.net.au.

Your committee Ray Radford: convener Michael Howes – treasurer Robert Bender: FriendsNET Laura Mumaw

Maelor Himbury - secretary Sue Wright Sarah Fowler

See the following page for the maps referred to in the Convener's report

Map 1: This is the area that pays the Park Rate, and is the Urban Boundary from 1996

Map 2: This is the boundary of metropolitan Melbourne in 2014, which you can see is much larger than the area paying the Park Rate. The main expansion has been to the southeast and northeast. Residents of the new area pay no Park Rate.