Projects
Womurrah: Community Forest Research Facility
In 1999 the Commonwealth and State Governments provided funding through the Natural Heritage Trust (Telstra selloff) to the Murrah/Bunga Koala Recovery Project that proposed initiating a Koala recovery project across tenures. There were two stages to the project, in the first year the major focus was to establish the potential for growing primary Koala feed trees.
Primary Koala feed trees, Forest Red Gum (foreground), planted in deep alluvial soil as part of the Murrah/Bunga Koala Recovery and Riparian Restoration project.
The second year of the project was directed at setting up a feral predator exclosure consisting of public and private land, around a forested sub-catchment of about 180 hectares, in the lower Murrah River catchment. Unfortunately the NSW Forestry Commission who originally supported the proposal, changed their mind and have attempted to thwart the project ever since.
Despite this set back, the proponents have decided to continue the project on the basis that the decision whether to continue does not and should not belong to a rogue enterprise like the NSW Forestry Commission.
The exclosure fence for Womurrah is over 6.5 kilometres long and stand 2 metres tall. Steel strainers carry 8 strands of high tensile plain wire supporting wire netting that extends out for about 30cm at the top. At the edge of this extension is a single electric wire that acts as a final deterrent to any fox or cat to make it that far.
The aim is to complete the exclosure and workings bees are planned to undertake the work required. As well as completing the fence (mostly clipping on netting) flora and fauna surveys are also being undertaken. When complete and feral free, locally and regionally extinct species will be re-introduced to establish protected breeding colonies. Once established and effective feral control measures are implemented elsewhere, some of these animals will be released and monitored in unprotected areas.
If you have some spare time and would like to help complete the exclosure, contact@fiveforests.net