Friends of the Box-Ironbark Forests

If you missed the launch of the FOBIF publication, Eucalypts of the Mount Alexander Region, you can now see the morning’s proceedings thanks to Chris Timewell from Connecting Country who filmed the event and put together this terrific video.

The guide is now available for $10 at Stonemans Bookroom, the Information Centre in the Market Building, the Enviroshop (Newstead) and the Guildford Store. It can also be purchased through Paypal ($13 including postage).

FOBIF has made a submission to the Strengthening Parks Victoria consultation. The essence of the submission is set out below:

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We welcome the opportunity to participate in this process, and offer our views under the headings supplied in the workbook.

Topic #1 – Connecting people and parks

Question prompt: How do you and your communities enjoy parks? What barriers prevent you from enjoying parks more? How can we create parks that are welcoming and inclusive for all Victorians and our visitors?

Our members enjoy parks for their natural and cultural values. Barriers to this enjoyment include destructive trail bikes, rogue prospecting, rubbish dumping and rampant environmental weeds. All of these are a problem partly as a result of the serious understaffing of Parks Victoria resulting in lack of supervision, inadequate monitoring and non existent or weak feral plant and animal controls.

Other barriers include over management of tracks by operatives with little or no appreciation of roadside vegetation, and some fuel management programs conducted without proper reference to ecological values.

How to overcome these barriers? Adequate resourcing would be a necessary start.

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The Eucalypts of the Mount Alexander Region book is now launched and more than 200 copies were sold on the day. Bernard Slattery, Ern Perkins and Bronwyn Silver signed many copies and buyers also received 2 bookmarks with photos from the book as well as a FOBIF fungi poster.

Geoff Park (Photo by John Ellis)

We heard Geoff Park talk about how wonderful it is that we are able to put the collective local knowledge and expertise of our natural environment into a guide such as this and he congratulated the authors. Many people contributed to the book’s publication and are delighted with the finished product.

 

Noel Muller (Photo by John Ellis)

 

 

Local Parks Victoria Ranger, Noel Muller, outlined how the local community could respond to the current Parks Victoria survey – what do you love and value about our parks, and what could be improved? An opportune time to let the managers and government know the value we place on the natural environment with eucalypts being integral to its health.

Ern Perkins (Photo by John Ellis)

 

 

Bernard then spoke about Ern’s latest guide to native plants of our area – and Ern explained how to use the program.

 

 

 

People stayed to catch up, ask questions, find out about the latest happenings and to enjoy morning tea.

John McMahon sent us the following comment:

I ducked into the library yesterday to get a copy and was amazed at the huge turnout. After reading the book I am no longer amazed, it is of excellent quality and I can see that a lot of care and love has gone into it. Your work is exceptional and you should be proud of it, the photos, the descriptions, the local information is accurate and well put together – well done. It’s probably too cheap though!

The guide is now available for $10 at Stonemans, the Market Building, the Enviroshop (Newstead) and the Guildford Store. It can also be purchased through Paypal ($13 including postage).