Rehoming old bird nets, Global Plastic Treaty Talks Fail & upcoming Border Landcare Day to Focus on Feathers, September 20th 10am - a 5-acre bird watching site located in the Tenterfield Shire.

The Resource Recovery group is looking for a person(s) to take over the role of managing the items being collected for the Terracycle program. Elaine set this up but is now moving away from the Granite Belt. This would suit people wanting to help out in a practical fashion and make a difference to the recycling options available on the Granite Belt.

Save the date:

• 10 August – collecting quoll monitoring cameras in Broadwater State Forest

• 20 August and 8 October - Weeding around the endangered Black Grevillea (Grevillea Scortichinii) at Thulimbah.

• Pub Chat Friday 5 September at O’Mara’s

• Trivia night – 11 October 2025 - save the date (TBC)

Saturday 23 August. Come along to hear about strategies being adopted by local and state governments to try and control feral cats and how cat owners can act responsibly to contain their pets on their own properties.

The Stanthorpe Rare Wildflower Consortium and Gunimaa Nursery from Tenterfield are teaming up to present an excellent Border Landcare Organic Group day at the Whistlestop Community Gardens on Saturday 19th July, starting at 10am until 2pm.

Plastic Free July is a global movement that helps millions of people be part of the solution to plastic pollution - so we can have cleaner streets, oceans, and beautiful communities. Will you be part of Plastic Free July by pledging to refuse single use plastics?

Community Engagement Team news & upcoming events

• Bushcare day 16 July at Greenlands

• Trivia night – 11 October 2025 – keep this evening free so you can come along and enjoy a night out with friends at our fundraiser. Details to follow.

• Pub Chat – Friday 6 September, 5pm O'Mara's Hotel – out the back.

The Stanthorpe Rare Wildflower Consortium is organising a wattle identification workshop on Saturday 16 August in the discovery centre at the Amiens State School. So if you want to learn more about the diversity of wattles on the Granite Belt, this will be a great opportunity to improve your skills.

GBSAN's cat management group is proposing to hold a public information session on Saturday 23 August to help raise community awareness about the impacts cats are having on wildlife, neighbours and human health. The discussion will also cover what strategies can be used to encourage responsible pet ownership to try and reduce these impacts.

Community updates, including our film night, Pub Chat, Biodiversity Linkages projects, Bushcare group, Quolls & more.

Boomerang Alliance is pushing to stop plastic pollution and solve the packaging issue by lobbying for an extended producer responsibility scheme to require producers to fund the collection and recovery of their packaging, by fast-tracking a national soft plastics collection scheme and by introducing tougher regulations for problem plastics and single-use plastic items.

The setting is Messines Farm in Amiens on the Granite Belt, and it is the star of the show. In four parts, the documentary explores the practice of regenerative farming in real life.  Backed up by the evidence and guest scientists the documentary clearly outlines the benefits of regenerative farming and what it looks like from the soil up. 

The recent Federal Election confirmed that the majority of Australians are looking for a less divisive more respectful debate about the big challenges facing Australia.

The Granite Belt urgently needs a strategy to reverse the threat of species extinction in our region. Locally endangered species include the Koala and the Spotted- tailed Quoll. According to the latest information, 27 fauna species are listed as threatened and 45 species of the Granite Belt’s flowering plants are listed as threatened including 5 that are critically endangered.

Plastic bottle caps are often on the list of the most common items found in wild places and every effort we can make to keep them out of our environment is worthwhile. Unfortunately, the advice for citizens in the Southern Downs has been to take the lids off bottles and put them in the landfill bin, but there are many people in our community who have been hoarding caps in the hope that a solution can be found. We think we might have found one!

Climate change sceptics and deniers need to go no further than their home insurance bills to confirm that we are all starting to pay for the impacts of climate change. 

As the financial arbiters of risk and associated costs, the global insurance sector has started passing on the cost of climate change to consumers. And like climate change, the financial impacts are truly global. 

We have been putting most of our energy and time this last month into a proposal to relaunch the Land for Wildlife programme in our region and for the Southern Downs Regional Council to create a Land for Wildlife Officer position. 

5PM FRIDAY 16TH MAY 2025. COME FOR A DRINK OUT THE BACK AT O’MARA’S HOTEL AND MEET YOUR FELLOW GBSAN MEMBERS

The Southern Downs Regional Council has announced the dates for free drop off days for Household Chemicals, Warwick on 12th April, 9am-3pm, and Stanthorpe on 3rd May, 9am-3pm (yes, that’s election day).

Another great Bushcare morning weeding out LOVEGRASS at Amiens where Andrew lives. This is a wildflower hotspot. Andrew has extensive knowledge of the wonderful wildflowers and grasses. We helped grubbing out LOVEGRASS clumps and you can see how native grasses and the endangered Zieria Graniticolia have been able to raise their heads. A good strategic use of our GBSAN Bushcare group to help with bringing back healthy biodiversity. Andrew even baked us a cake and took us on a walk to see the exciting things happening on this block.