Pacey Road Project
This project is a partnership between residents of Pacey Road, Upper Brookfield, the MCCG, and the Brisbane City Council. It commenced in 2011 with support from the then BCC Creek Ranger and MCCG members using a model of neighbourhood cooperation by conducting working bees on residents’ properties. The objective was to restore the natural vegetation as much as possible by removing weeds and replanting with native plants mainly sourced from the MCCG nursery. Working bees have been held every 4-6 weeks ever since. In 2013 the group received a grant from the Department of Environment and Heritage Protection under the Everyone`s Environment Grants program. This has enabled the group to tackle larger weed infestations using experienced contractor labour.
The specific objectives of the project are to:
- Repair and restore a degraded riparian corridor in a small bushland sub-catchment in peri-urban Brisbane (Pacey Road) in the catchment of Moggill Creek;
- Remove 100m3 of invasive exotic weeds;
- Plant 2400 local native plants and shrubs;
- Hold a roving working bee every 4-6 weeks organised by the Pacey Rd group and attended by all participating landholders as well as 1-2 MCCG members from outside the sub-catchment;
- Control weeds within designated areas along the creek. Declared weeds (madiera vine, glycine, asparagus vine, chinese celtis and camphor laurel) will be a priority. Lantana will also be controlled but removal will be a staged approach over a longer period of time to ensure bird, small mammal and reptile habitat is not destroyed before it can be structurally replaced by native species;
- Carry out site condition assessment at 6 and 12 months, and monitor water quality on 3 occasions at 3 sites along the creek over the 12 month period.
This project finished in February 2014 but the Pacey Rd group will continue its work with the support of the MCCG.
A number of the residents were already members of the Brisbane City Council Land for Wildlife (LFW) program, whose presence has been important to the success of the group. Since this work commenced, several more have joined up to the program. LFW thus works very well in conjunction with the activities described above.
