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The situation here around Lakes Alexandrina and Albert and in the Coorong was quite dire.
During the drought when the water went down it was pretty devastating both to the environment
and the community. It was very sad and the locals were really
upset and we like had stickers and stuff on our cars saying, ‘Goolwa needs more water
now’. It was just really sad to see all the native fish and turtles and that dying.
And you wouldn’t know it looking at the water levels today but that’s only been
back like that for about the last just under 12 months.
It’s really better because more fish have come back and all the birds like pelicans
and that have come back as well. And we don’t have those stickers anymore so it’s good
as well. Well I’m sure there will be future droughts and also obviously dependent on flows
but we want to try and increase habitat, therefore increase the resilience of the ecosystem around
the lakes. This year we’re putting in 220 000 native plants Volunteers are involved
right from that seed collection through the propagation to putting them in the ground.
And so there’s that ownership. We’ll be here for the long term, locals, and so it’s
really important that we have that relationship because in the long term we’ll be the ones
that are caring about whether those plants are still growing and thriving and that’s
what we want to do. Well with this group here we’ve got today,
their average is probably three to four thousand per day per group but you know, some groups,
school kids for instance, might do 200 per day. We’ll be providing the Eucalypts and
Sheoaks up on top of the rise, that provides a wonderful roosting and nesting site for
a wide range of wetland birds. The site as you get down towards the waterline is more
of a foraging site a feeding area for those birds, some birds will next down in the reeds
and rushes so a wide range of habitats. Helping to re-vegetate around the edge of the lakes
makes better habitat and better ecosystems, staves off perhaps the problems of acid sulphate
soil, with adding some more carbon into the soils around the lakes so much better resilience
for the long term. Yeah it will help later on when there’s
another drought because it lowers the salt table and it makes it more resilient. We’re
interested in building resilience within the communities but also resilience within the
environment. We know that if we don’t have healthy environment, you’re not going to
have those healthy communities and healthy economies. This has provided people and opportunity
to do something positive for their environment to get out there and have a hands on impact
on improving the resilience of the lakes improving the resilience of this wonderful Ramsar listed
wetland that we’ve got here and just empowering people to be a part of it.