Conservation Conversations: Preserving Paradise in the Hunter and Central Coast

The River Red Gum was recently voted as Australia’s favourite tree. It is a species that would have once towered over the floodplains of the Hunter Valley and is now restricted to isolated patches. To save such a highly impacted species and its habitat, understanding and restoring kinship is key.

Follow the journey of migratory shorebirds which in spring arrive from the arctic circle more than 12,000 kilometres away to spend the whole summer in the Hunter Estuary before flying back in autumn to their breeding grounds of Alaska and Siberia.

On the snowgrass plains of the Barrington Tops National Park, 60 people gathered on their ancestor’s Country to light the first Cultural burn on the Barrington Tops Plateau since colonisation. The purpose: to reawaken sleeping knowledge from the world’s oldest living culture, to demonstrate and share pathways to restoring endangered species by re-connecting to their original food story. By listening, sharing, collaborating, and eating, the Grow, Harvest, Heal project aims to change the way we approach threatened species management.

In 2017 when the Manning River Turtle was listed as endangered under the NSW Biodiversity Conservation Act it was only known from 13 locations. Following 6 years of surveys it is now known from over 100 locations throughout the Manning valley. This talk will highlight the importance of the remote and rugged upper catchments to the ongoing persistence of the species.