Friends of Broadwater
Some of the attendees at the Broadwater State Forest induction morning
Following on from a successful launch of the Friends of Broadwater State Forest, there was an induction morning held at the Sims Lane entrance to the forest in early June. A total of 24 intrepid souls turned out for what became a beautiful sunny morning. A couple of the participants had come from Brisbane and northern NSW.
The acting Ranger-In-charge of Girraween National Park – Andrew Packer, gave a very good introduction to the Forest and some of the issues associated with the area. He highlighted some of the weed and feral animal issues. There was also some discussion about the fire management of the area. Andrew was also able to give some insight into the difficulties of enforcing some of the regulations regarding illegal use of the park. It was highlighted that if visitors come across illegal use they should just collect information and pass it on, and in no way try to interact. There will be further discussions with QPWS in the near future as to how the volunteers of the Friends group can be used best to advance some of the management programs.
Part of the funding that has been received from Friends of Parks Qld was used to purchase three wildlife cameras for wildlife monitoring in the forest. Paul Revie and Erin Ryan-Rose extracted themselves from the busy Quoll surveys at Girraween to demonstrate how to set up the cameras and the type of sites that could be used by quolls.
Paul also talked about quolls in general outlining their relatively short life span and the size of the area that an individual animal may use.
Some of the future events planned are aiming to use and improve citizen science programs. They will include how to use the information gathered from the wildlife cameras, an introduction to bird watching and plant identification. Dates and formats are yet to be decided and if there are any ideas on other programs, please contact Chris at broadwater@gbsan.org.au.