Bonus: Mike Mulvaney — Regenerating Red Hill

We couldn't fit all of Michael Mulvaney's stories and insights into our Local Environment Heroes conversation, so we're sharing his full Impact Hour talk, as bonus content.

As part of our collaboration between SEE Change, the Conservation Council of the ACT Region & Canberra Environment Centre, this Impact Hour session reflects on what Mike has learned from spending so much time in one place — and on how a small group of people can become a source of new knowledge, a conduit for others to get involved, and a community of people who care deeply for a landscape.

And then there are the Gang-gangs.

Ten years ago, Mike didn't even know Gang-gangs nested on Red Hill. Now, through years of watching, learning, and trying to understand how best to care for the birds, the regenerators have established that 31% of all known Gang-gang nests are on or near the Hill — making Red Hill, in Mike's words, the "Gang-gang capital of the world".

It's a story about regeneration, citizen science, curiosity and the joy of returning to the same place and still finding something new to be surprised and delighted by.

Recorded at Dissent Cafe & Bar, Canberra, in May 2026.

'Pub language warning' for parents who may be listening alongside little ears. 

Local Environment Heroes is a Canberra Environment Centre podcast celebrating the people working to create a healthier, more sustainable and connected community.

Find out more and get involved: canberraenvironment.org

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Thanks for listening; environmental change starts with people. 🌱

Transcript

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SPEAKER_06 0:08

Thank you, Simon, and thank you all for coming out on this cold night. Um we're in a pub, so pub rules, so that means heckling is mandatory, and um I can heckle back and I can swear. Um I'd like to um acknowledge that we're on the land of the Nunnawal and Naranby people, and they did a lot of a lot better job of caring for Red Hill than uh we ever had. Look, you might be here a bit on false pretenses because I sort of prepared the blurb before I prepared my talk. Um and look, I've been depressed lately. Um just the way climate change isn't being taken seriously by governments around the world, including our own. And I found that actually preparing this talk has given me a lot of optimism because when I look back what we've achieved over the last 40 years, it's it's pretty amazing. And I look in this room, and everywhere I look, there's people who have inspired me and have done great things for the environment. So I'm telling my story and the story of the Red Hill regenerators, but it could have been anybody's, and really the purpose is I don't want you to do anything different after hearing this talk. I just want you to get continue what you're doing and to be a bit more optimistic about what it can affect. For those who don't know, Red Hill is a big ridge behind Parliament House, 350 hectares of boxgum woodland. Um my story began when I was a tiny little kid, about 10. Now, this was before my balls had dropped, that's how small I was. And I have to give you that bit of crudity because um you might not have believed that I was a boy soprano and was singing with a group, and we used to practice at this lady's house in Forest, and we all have individual songs, and we have a joint song. I'd practice mine first, and then I'd have to go for a bit of a walk where everyone else did it, then come back for the big songs. Three houses down from this street, it was in Dominion Street, there was this old guy, and he had these Pyrocantha and Katoniaster bushes, but he had topers them. They were squares and circles, he had a peacock, and every time I'd be there for my singing practice, um, I'd be looking at these hedges, looking at them at all angles, and they were dead straight. Anyway, this guy must have noticed me. And um he came up one day and asked me my name and said whether I wanted a job, and I said, Oh yeah. He said, Oh, can you trim uh hedges for me? I said, Oh yeah. So um he was pretty old, he was a bit beyond doing it himself by that stage, and he only lived for a few months. I only got to trim them about three times, but I really had this love of trim cotoniaster and fire thorn hedges. As a kid, I used to play on Red Hill, and you can imagine how bad I was feeling when I was on Red Hill, and there were all these scraggly catonias and pyricanthers taking over the hill. I actually worked out because I was that sort of kid that was there was over a hundred thousand individual shrubs that needed trimming on Red Hill. And yeah, it it plagued me for a while, so much so that I when I went to university I did honours. Have you guess what I did my honours on? Yeah, how big a weed potential were fire thorns and catoniaster, and that just worsened my nightmare because my honours pieces predicted it was gonna take over Canberra. Fortunately, a mate, Leon Horsville, who was a landscape architector, he actually read my honours thesis and he came and said, Michael, what are you gonna do about it? And we thought, oh well, um I should have also mentioned that you know that these things are pretty massive. Um and there weren't just pyroclones, there was heaps of other things like Cootham underwattles. And Leah and I said, Look, it's a pretty big job, I don't think the government's up to it. And he said, Yeah, that's why it's so bad. So we thought we need to get people to do it. So we then approached the manager of ACT Parks, Tony Branley, and I think he'd been thinking along the same lines because he jumped at the suggestion straight away that he formed groups to look after parts of the natural area around Canberra. But before we start, I just want to give you a bit of historic background to give it context. So I just need to point out, as it comes later in the story, it's not me in my usual hat, that that's me with my beautiful black hair. Um but Red Hill, the weed distribution isn't even because Forest was basically built in 1920. So that northern end of Red Hill that backs onto Forest, all the weeds came from people's gardens. So that's where they mainly come. Narrabunda and Deacon weren't developed until the mid-1950s, and then the rest of Narrabunda and uh Ewes and Garon, that was late 60s, 1970s. So it's an uneven distribution, and also we've got a strange mix of species that come from gardens that were planted in the 1920s, including Rowan, which was a gift from the people of Scotland to Canberra. And the Scots being the bloody cheap such that they are, they gave us an environmental weed that probably didn't cost them anything. Just Rowan sorbus, which and we're still bloody cutting it out on Red Hill. Um I'm told that in Scotland they planted in front of their house, and it's really good for keeping away witches. So not only have we got the bloody Scotch to blame about cheapskates and weeds all over Red Hill, but they're apparently to blame for the madness that came over the country when we kicked out Julia Gillard and put in Tony Abbott. But this is a talk about hope, and I want to mention that all those smug-looking Liberals have since lost their seat. So there is hope. Look, there's been a massive uh Aboriginal Nunavut history on Red Hill, but I just want to point out that as in Bill Gamage's book, The Um Largest Estate on Earth, he came up with the fact that on the top of the hills where it's rocky, we should be having straight trees. But we've got these big spreading woodland trees, which means that when that tree grew, it grew where there was a lot of space, it wasn't hemmed in by other trees. Um he was saying that basically the top of hills are generally pretty unproductive, but Aboriginal people would clear them through burning and have these laneways where they would kill kangaroos. So the top of Red Hill's probably been cleared for some time. You can see in this photo here a more straighter tree further down the slope, which which is more typical. Um Red Hill was lucky that from 1840, when people first started grazing in the ACT, Red Hill property that they the people were absent, they weren't here. And in the 1870s it became part of the Dundrun property, but it was really the boundary line between Dundrun and Yao Lumla. So they didn't have fences, so you you wouldn't probably put your lots of stock right up on that boundary line where they get intermingled. So Redhill probably had less stock than you would elsewhere, and also in those days, we know from a account that was done in 1876 at Dundrun, they were only running three and a half sheep a hectare, where today we run about ten sheep a hectare. So again, it didn't really have a lot of grazing. Um in 1909, the land Duntrun was presumed, and the government took it over, and basically again, nothing happened on Red Hill till the 1920s when the bottom half of Red Hill, the site that's got Davidson's trigger in it, so from sort of Garon down, was put in as a soldier settlement block. The northern half was kept, the southern half was a soldier settlement block. We were lucky that one Red Hill had a was much bigger size block than anywhere else, and we were lucky because if you won the ballot, it was put in ballot, and if you were an ex-soldier that won the ballot, you had to clear your land. But Red Hill was lucky in that the guy that won the Red Hill block, he had one arm blown off in the trenches. So he wasn't really up to topping and clearing too um too much. So again, he he kept the block uh until 1929 when he sold it to his um nephew Charlie. Charlie kept the block all the way up until 1995 with head grazing on Red Hill. The northern half was excluded because Walder Burley Griffin, in his revolutionary thinking, wanted the hills to regenerate. And he actually had the idea originally that Red Hill would be planted with red plants, and we do have three different red plants that were planted on Red Hill. The gravilias have become a little bit weedy, but the Callistemans are still up there in their rows where the swanson has been eaten out by the kangaroos. We're talking about replanting it. In the 1950s, that northern half that Griffin kept apart was actually given to Charlie. He was supposed to only graze 40 to 70 cattle, but he used to graze a couple of hundred. But he he had a block up in northern uh New South Wales, so he transferred cattle in between the two places. So the grazing was intermittent. That it'd be quite harsh, but then it would be left for quite a long while. Um so again, Red Hill sort of survives. So it still was pretty weedy as a result of Charlie's heavy grazing. Thistles were pretty extensive. So to summarize, we had hundreds of thousands of woody weeds having spread from the gardens, and we had a lot of grazing agricultural weeds. So this is us in the 1980s, there's five of us. I don't know why we're looking so relaxed, but maybe because we've only got um uh 99,500 woody weeds you have to cut out. Um but yeah, there's five of us. This is 20 years later, there's nine of us. Um and do you have a chainsaw? We don't have a chainsaw, but uh parks did come and help us at times. Uh but you know we we were we were strong. And yes, I've got RSI from soaring. Uh but yes, uh if you notice those two photos, it's more in numbers, and to be generous, our average age is sort of 60 in the shade. Um and that's how we've been for 40 years. Um so what can and and we only met once or twice a month. So what can a group of people in their 60s do over 40 years? Actually, it's bloody staggering. So in this image, the orange in 1988 is areas like that picture of thistles that I was talking about. So it's basically a completely an understory that's dominated by weeds. The yellow is where you've got native grasses but no native herbs. The green is where you're getting a higher diversity. So you're getting a mixture of of um herbs and grasses. So in that 40 years, we've actually gone from 56% of the hill being dominated by weeze to that being less than 10%. We're going 40 years in two years, and by our 40th year anniversary, we're confident there'll be no low conditioned woodland left on Red Hill. We started off with 21 hectares of high quality woodland. We're now up to over 250 hectares. So, yeah, that's a lot of that's a lot of work. So that's this is what it looked like. I'm just going to rush through these. That's a gully above Strickland Crescent. This is along the summit road. Grand Hill was a dumping ground, but once people saw that people were looking after it, actually that dumping has has almost ceased. There was a guy who used to drive to Red Hill specifically so he could change his oil at the top. Um I baled him up one day, he was very apologetic. I haven't seen him since. Yeah, you can sort of see the change from thistle to native grass, and actually below that it's quite it's it's high quality. So, how can you get how can you change something like a thistle monoculture to native grassland? Well, we've had a few secret weapons. Our first secret weapon was the naughty girls at Red Hill. So for two years every fortnight, the girls who'd forgotten their sports gear and those that were on detention would come and uh work on Red Hill Friday afternoons. And we had these weed ones, and they'd just go around plunking any thistle that they saw. So this patch here used to be nothing but thistles, whereas now it's really high quality, and that's an old trough. So it was where the cows would congregate. So it was really, really weedy, and they've they've done a magnificent job. Our other secret reparant was Vernon Bailey, God bless his soul. Um Vernon is a nutritionist, and he would have a job where he'd go over to Sudan or Ethiopia, and his job was to assess the children and decide which ones they could save if they were given food, and which ones were going to die anyway. He would come back after doing that for three months, and he'd say, I need to get up on Red Hill and just chip thistles or spray spot spray thistles, and it was really good for his well-being. And being a regenerator and having a love for land is good for everybody's well-being. And Vernon really made a difference on the hill. That whole slope used to be saffron thistle. Oh, I need to tell you a story about Vernon just to show how good people on Red Hill generators are. When Johnny Howard was trying to make us all mean and horrible, Vernon was one of the first that had the sign that said refugees welcome here. And he had it up for about two weeks. And two weeks in, knock, knock, knock on the door, there's this African family. And he puts them up for two years. Now, um, lovely Vicky over there, it's got merchandise, and that includes photos by Larissa of the superb parrots and other things, and uh a book on poetry and nature notes. But um look, there's a song, it's a duo, Paul Kelly and Kev Carberty, not from Little Things Grow, but it's about attitudes to land. And Kev Carbeny says, This this land owns me, and Paul Kelly says, This land is mine, and I think it it reflects how land carers see the land. The land owns us, and it really becomes a spiritual thing, and that land grows on you. I've sort of had three experiences that really gave me the heebie-jeebies. Um the first one was I was taking a group for a walk on Red Hill, and we were trying to stop uh one of the many golf course developments, and it was in a pretty marginal area that was invaded by pine trees, and we were trying to argue that it was boxgum woodland, but it was pretty marginal. And I said, it'd be really great if a flock of superb parrots flew in here. Now we didn't get superb parrots in camber till 2005, and I like this was at about that time, and two weeks after I said that, this massive flock of superb parrots alighted in this land, and oh Pew, we wrote that off. And and um, the next time we were trying to stop a development that High Marsh was developing at the back of Deacon, and um, I've never seen this plant Zornia, which is this pea, which has got two leaflets rather than three. And um, I'd never seen it on Red Hill, but it was right on the spot that the developers want to build on, and I recorded it, photographed, and I haven't seen it since. The third time that this is when I'm really thinking, yes, there is some connection with the land, was because we're so close to Parliament House, politicians always come on Red Hill when they want to make a land care announcement. I've had the delight of telling three of the last four environment ministers what a poor job they were doing. They didn't change, but gee, it made me feel good. But anyway, this was uh at this occasion it was um well, we had a little hunt, I should say, as a minister, Greg Hunt to be precise. And um, he was up there announcing expansion of the Green Army with Zed Siselger. And I'd said how you know it was really great to have the Green Army to help a grey army like Arson and given this. Anyway, Greg Hunt, he he gets he gets in front of the television and he says word for word what I just said without even acknowledging me. Anyway, he's um he and Zed are walking back towards the cafe at the top of the hill at the top, and Zed's on the on the top slope, you know how tall Zed is, and you know, little Greg Hunt's down like this, and I have this impure thought, and I'm thinking, oh, I hope the magpies come and swoop them. And no sooner had I said that than zoom! Oh and you know, Zed's going like this, Greg Hunt's trying to hide behind Zed. They get up there, and I think, oh yeah, well, I've got to be really careful what I say here because this own this land has me, and and there is more than a presence. The other thing we've done to try and come back some of those uh uh things like the thistle is is doing planting. Um you take out a hundred thousand woody weeds, you you make a big difference in the landscape. And we were um pretty worried that a lot of those woody weeds that we're pulling out had woodland birds' nests in them. So one of our Merin members, Darren, he decided he would do a PhD on the effect of removing woody weeds had on woodland birds. And he went around to various spots around the ACT, but we also set up three one hectares, so 100 metre by 100 metre areas on Red Hill that had woody weeds, and we had cleared. Now to help us clear, we went round and we had 200 scouts. Now, I stupidly said, bring your own tools. Have a guess what tool every scout brought. No. No, an axe, a bloody axe. It was, and I'll tell you, it was like the the ghost of Dick Russell was there. These guys were swinging one-handed, and I'm thinking they're gonna fall out their hands, they're gonna knock someone down. That's when I went grey. That's right. Exactly. Thank you. Um so look, Darren's conclusion was that um yeah, when we when we took out those shrubs, we did the numbers of egg of small woodland birds fell quite dramatically. They did come back after seven years, but never to the same extent. And look, we've lost some of our woodland birds. Now, whether that's because we took out those weeds or because it's happening everywhere, it's a bit hard to say. But yeah, you have negatives and positives. Uh, one one way we tried to to get around that was to where we knew some of those birds were nesting, was to leave those areas. And then in 2002, we had this massive fire that took out all those woody weeds that we'd saved. So that sort of thwarted that plan of leaving areas for some birds. But we then divided the hill amongst our group. We probably had about 70 members at that time, and each of us took a little part, and we really targeted any regrowth of weeds. So we really got on top of all the woody weeds at that time. There was a mother's group with small kids, and you can't believe how many little coot'emunder wattle seedlings a kid will take out for a chocolate frog. Look, COVID gave us another opportunity to divide up the hill, and we had a uh yeah, we had it in for for Verbaskum, which went from being a common plant on Red Hill to being a rare one. So, yeah, taking advantages of things that happen, it's good. With that fire, we noticed that the speck of warblers who were ground nesting, there'd been studies beforehand and they had planned. We knew that there were ten family groups on the hill. What happened to them after the fire came through is that they moved into surrounding gardens. So surrounding gardens can actually play a part in helping the biodiversity. Now, this I'm sorry about this this photo of this really ugly guy who's just over there, but um he actually had quite a um a career as a um head and deputy head of uh boys' schools, but at the moment he's actually developed his superpower, and his superpower is um gorilla planting, and he's a man after my own heart because he has the approach that you um you you put it in and then you ask for permission afterwards. Um and John has transferred this green desert at Rennie Place into this beautiful, diverse planted area. In five years, John, you can't answer this, how many species has John allowed to come in to that little patch of Rennie Place after five years? How many species of animals are there? How many? Animals, animals. Fifty? Eddie Vassal 50? Six hundred and forty-one, including frogs, and that's that's probably out of date now. All right, now this is my friend Katarina, and she lives in the middle of McKellar. Her garden's about the average size, and it's not particularly flashy in terms of native habitat. How many species of moth do you think Katrina Caterina has uh recorded in her garden? That's pretty good. 600, he ransaw 600. 826 species of moth, which is a third of all the moths recorded in the ACT. That's in one suburban garden. So if you think your gardens haven't got life, it's because you you've either got really bad eyesight and you're not looking close enough. But actually, yeah, you can make a big difference. So we spend a lot of time telling people that they can make a difference. We use the um speck of warbler, particularly like a plant called Biseria, so we've got a whole lot of Biseria planted around people's gardens. We've also interacted with groups, like I've already mentioned the Boys' Scouts and the Girls' Grammar. We've actually had 13 schools that have worked with us. We've had not 12 schools that have worked with us, 13 community groups, which are mainly cubs, churches, or curtain uh or resident associations. And then we've got eight sister groups. One of the sister groups is sitting over there, and they're groups that are basically um doing the same thing but regenerating an area nearby. We've got in the same landscape and we help each other out. Look, we've also had um masses and masses of developer proposals in our first 20 years. We averaged two development proposals on Red Hill a year. That's 40. Like optic cables, telecommunications. We got so fed up with it that we actually, as a group, got all the par care groups together and we basically threatened the communications act to AGL that we were going to take them to court unless they improved their game, because actually there were laws that said what they're doing illegally, and they did change it. We also brought in worked out the nomination for for Boxgum Woodland, which has had pretty dramatic effects. So that's from a small group. I'm probably over time, am I? All right, I better hurry up. So, one thing about having a lot of people on your side, and we've established a site called Nature Mapper. And we've had people in our area put 8,000 images taken on Red Hill on Nature Mapper, and from that we've had heaps and heaps of rare and threatened species. All of these species require particular management. Um so they include this butterfly, which I uh small ant blue, I only know from 12 locations in the world as breeding, and it has a relationship with ant, and the ant home rests in uh wood, so that wood needs to be protected from fire. So just knowing that fact has changed a lot of things, and that's come from ordinary people. It really annoys me. All the important information on Red Hill has come from just people who walk on it and take these photos. It hasn't come from the land managers, but the land managers don't actually pay that due regard. They think they know when when actually they're just managing for the vegetation, not for the important things. Um look, I've banged on about uh nature mapping before, and but it has transformed the way the business conservation management is done in the ACT, so please use it and um look I'll jump that one and just get on to the gang gang. Uh again, we were fighting a development, there was a gang gang nest discovered by Jackie and Jenny in in the development area, and we said, oh, how important's that? We went and asked, and it was only one other known gang gang nest in the whole of Australia. Beauty, we stopped the development, but then we thought they're gonna come back and say, Oh, it's because no one's looked. So then we thought, oh well, who's looked for them? And no one had. Like, a bird like a gang gang, and nothing is known about it. So uh over the next eight years we actually did most of the research that's been done on the gang gang. And yeah, we have become the world experts. Um we've gone from two nests to 138. Um but again, we we didn't have any particular expertise, we did tie in with people who did. Um, but it just goes to show that actually you can make a pretty massive impact in that now the authorities are coming for us and asking us for advice about how to manage gang gangs nationally. Um and I have become the artificial spokesman for gang gangs, and um and the gang gangs want to tell me that there's stuff from climate change in that really heavy rains, the rain falls down the tree, it runs down the trunk and goes into the hollow, which are usually on that trunk, and if it's really intense rain, it drowns the chicks, and that's going to happen more and more regularly. Um, temperatures above 35 degrees are when it's really smoky, the chicks come out too early in the hollow. The hollow is about a half a metre deep and they crawl up to the top just before their fledge, or if it's really hot or smoky, they come out, and if they're not quite balanced, they often fall on the ground. And then that 1990-2020 fires, um 30% of their habitat got burnt, and it would have killed heaps and heaps of gang gangs. The experts, of which there were none, said probably killed 10%. Um, you know, they were just pulling that out of their ass, but it probably was a lot. So, in impotent rage, I decided that I would uh start a second career and um become a career criminal. But um this was two years ago, and I'm still waiting for my day in court, and John and I got arrested together, and it looks like police incompetence is gonna get us off, so um we're not gonna get it, but it does bring it back to you know how do you keep that optimism up? Um, you know, why why do I think I it's worth getting arrested? And it's all those wonderful people that uh have helped on Red Hill Regenerators, it's been a teen effort, it's all those wonderful people like John who are doing work elsewhere, and you know, people like Annie and and Helen and they're just all of you together, and um it's really great that we can tell our stories and and have that, and I hope it does build up um a sense of optimism and that you can make a change even sometimes when you really don't know what you're doing. Thank you.

SPEAKER_08 32:23

So we've got about 20 minutes for questions for Michael, um, unless uh anything else. Does anyone have any questions?

SPEAKER_06 32:34

The woody weeds. Can you repeat the question? Yeah, so it was what what of the woody weeds were the most value for the birds? Actually, it was um the the the it wasn't individual species, it was the cover that they were providing that was of value. Um blackberries, fire thorn, cotoniasta, um Tudamunderwall, they were the uh nettle tree were the main ones. Um but uh Darren did his work on on Mount Angel in a few other places as well.

SPEAKER_08 33:05

But yeah. We've got on the mic now, so the question was did you approach the schools or the community groups to participate, or do they come to you?

SPEAKER_06 33:17

Yeah, look, um thank you. It was a a mixture of both. Mainly the schools came to us, and it used to be really simple. You just say, Oh yeah, come up and do this and that, and now you have to go through this, but yeah, we just did your process. And it's sort of killed it. Uh the grammar schools are the only ones who can afford the time to put in the paperwork. So we're only dealing with grammar schools now. It's yeah, it's just disappointing.

SPEAKER_09 33:49

I saw another one over here.

SPEAKER_08 33:51

Does someone have their hand up? Yep, at the back. I'm gonna get two to use the microphone. No, we wouldn't because we're doing the recording as well, so it's just a bit better for the recording.

SPEAKER_04 34:00

All right. Well, this is a bit of a cheeky question. Uh what were the slow what what did you want to talk about that you had to skip through?

SPEAKER_06 34:10

Well, it will that's good. Thank you, Andrew. It was basically um with button wicker work, which we've been surveying for over those 40 years, and we've counted 12 times. And the numbers at the moment, we used to have 10 locations and about 5,500 plants. We're now down to five locations and about 2,500 plants. And the main reason for that is that it's the canopy of the natural shrubs, the native shrubs, is is increasing and it's shading out the button wrinkle. And I was just saying how complex it is to actually manage for individual species, and when you've got hundreds of hundreds of individual species, it's really only park care groups like us that have been going for 40 years that gain that knowledge that can put these two things together. Thanks for that question, Andrew.

SPEAKER_09 35:09

Yep, Jonathan.

SPEAKER_07 35:12

How close is the is where you are now to what you might term a mature woodland? Do you keep expect it to keep changing or is it uh kind of almost there in terms of equilibrium?

SPEAKER_06 35:30

Yeah. I think in places we're almost there. Uh we still have a lot of large old big trees. Uh but we lost uh a lot of the trees that were a hundred years old a hundred years ago. So we're missing trees that are sort of 50 to 200 years old. Uh so that's going to take a time. And I think until that happens, we'll have a much denser layer of things like dog wood than we would normally instead of having that sort of opi grass in the area. Um, yeah, so I think we've still got a long way to go, and we're missing, you know, we don't have bettings and things that used to be there. But there's a TARDIS on Red Hill, I don't know if you ever have seen it, and it's a painted pump station, and it does just look just the guys painted it as as the TARDIS. And I like to take groups down the steps. We walk by the TARDIS, I say, we're getting in the TARDIS, then we come out, and I say, This is pretty much what Red Hill looked like 250 years ago. So in places we are there. Minus a couple of hundred species that are missed.

SPEAKER_03 36:44

Hi Michael, thanks for a really wonderful talk, very funny as well. Um I was really interested in the moth, the moth component of your story. Was it over 800 species? Yes that someone was able to attract to their place in McKellar. Um, what can we do to encourage moths into our homes? What are the steps?

SPEAKER_06 37:03

Yeah, so it's not just moths because you know John's got frogs and all sorts of things, but really um it's having a diversity of garden plantings in your in your garden and having a ground layer, a shrub layer, a mid-height small tree, and tall trees.

SPEAKER_09 37:22

And yeah, you'll you'll find them in there. Another one up the back here.

SPEAKER_04 37:29

Yeah, Michael, um what what's the awareness? Have you seen a change in the awareness of the local residents in the area? I mean, they obviously use the the hill a lot for walks, probably to de-stress after having to do a brief for a minister or whatever. Um, so um Yeah, thanks, thanks Andrew.

SPEAKER_06 37:53

Another good question. Yeah, look, um we are really very well supported by our local community, even if they're not coming up and helping us, they're patting on the the back a lot. But also, because we're fought in all those developments, we were sort of the champions for the all the suburbs around, and don't remember that. Um and look, it's when the cattle were there, there was spiky fences that people couldn't climb over, um, and there were thistles and prickly woody weeds. Um, so it was hardly ever used for walking except going up the sealed road up to the top, whereas now it's yeah, it's one of the most used parts of Canberra Nature Park. So, yeah, I think we have made a massive difference and people are aware of its values.

SPEAKER_01 38:50

Um going back to the moths, uh, do you promote the use of moth tracker for bogon moths? That I I think Melbourne Zoo runs it.

SPEAKER_06 39:00

Yes, we have been involved, but actually we were pretty underwhelmed by the response they gave back to us when we said yes, we wanted to be a part. Uh we're expecting they would send us some photos and things, but that but they didn't. But yeah, I've been keeping an eye out to see if we've photographed any track moths, but as so far we haven't.

SPEAKER_10 39:22

Um why why do you think it is that uh that strip at Red Hill and where all the gang gangs breed and everyone's been recording them? And the if there's actually been lots of other you know um threatened species birds found there. Why is it that spot so great for them? Is it because of the red hill regenerators?

SPEAKER_06 39:42

No, like I say, we've probably had a bad influence on a lot of those woodland birds. Um it's a it's a big patch and it's a sort of a thumb which joins onto a larger patch, which is uh Faro Ridge, Magar, Waniasa, Calambrae. So yeah, it's it's actually 13 hectares of box gum woodland, which is the second largest patch left anywhere. The largest patch is Mulligan Flat on the other side. So I think that's a a big reason. Um I think also what we plant in our gardens encourages some of those birds. Certainly things like the sephur parrots and the gang gangs. Uh some of the birds like the speckle warblers, yeah, not not so much, but yeah. The birds. Well, um just any shrub really, but berseria in particular, because it's got that prickly sort of cover. Uh but we also plant that because we've got three rare jewel beetles and they like the white flowers.

SPEAKER_09 40:50

Yep, one up the back here.

SPEAKER_00 40:52

However, hi Michael, thanks. Um we're from the Mawson Ponds crew, and you've been fantastic helping us over the years. Um, what value do those sort of recreated native plantings um what value do they have to a bigger areas like Mount Taylor, which is where we're closest to, or um places like Red Hill?

SPEAKER_06 41:16

Well, Well y your your plannings are very similar to John's, and I think if you guys were a bit more active on Nature Mapper, you would have a similar number to what John's got. So in its own right, you're creating habitat. But but also you are you are that you are a link, and along that Yellumba Creek is quite an important corridor, and just by creating a bigger patch of habitat, there'll be more species that can use that corridor. Um yeah, so there'll be things that do use the suburb and things that won't, and you're sort of just quite drastically improving the value just by your plannings and your managements. Um looking at some of the things you've got there, they're not really urban species. Uh and you know, you had the rare poranga recorded there in the grassland, so you're maintaining habitat for that, which is a grasshopper which is only known from about 35 to 40 places in the world, and your yours happens to be one.

SPEAKER_08 42:27

Michael, can I ask, just because you mentioned it, there's been a lot of discussion recently about the future of Nature Mapper, and I know you probably have updates just for people who don't know where it's up to. Could you maybe just give a brief uh update on where Nature Mapper is up to?

SPEAKER_06 42:40

Yeah, so look, um it's got money for another two years, but actually doesn't the money we've got doesn't cover the cost. It's still being subsidised by Aaron, who's the IT guy who runs it. But Aaron does these million dollar contracts for other governments, and he's happy to he subsidises us, and it and as long as he's happy to continue, Nature Mapper will continue for for many years, as I'm thinking.

SPEAKER_04 43:10

Hi, Michael. It's Andrew again.

SPEAKER_06 43:15

You've asked two good questions, Andrew. You're pushing your luck at the tree in a row.

SPEAKER_04 43:20

I think I've got a good one, another good one in me, yeah. Um what about the um interconnectivity that a place like Red Hill Nature Reserve and our various nature reserves in Canberra has with the rest of Australia, if not the world? Um so you what about the story about the little eagle that used to be nesting on Red Hill and then was tracked to the Northern Territory?

SPEAKER_06 43:52

And yeah, so things there is big interconnections, and yeah, when I was a kid we didn't have CoEl. In Canberra. Now, do they come here now because we've built up the links all the way from Athendon down to Canberra? Perhaps. And yeah, we we do have a lot of migratory species. So at the moment we've got the scarlet robins coming down to Red Hill, and they're using they're they're travelling through places like Mawson Pond planning and things like that to get where they're going. But yes, the more you spend time on a place, the more you realise just how connected it is to everything else, and yeah, how climate change, you've got a stupid American president, can really affect a place like Red Hill, which yeah. But the eagle, you're right, it actually nested on Black Mountain, and the male would fly up to the Northern Territory during winter, and the female would come and roost on Red Hill and hunt rabbits. Fortunately, one year the male didn't return from the Northern Territory, and the female found another mate, and they've moved away, so we haven't had a little eagle for a little while. But yeah, it is things move around. The bigger patches and the more connected they are, the more chance we have. As I say, we didn't have superb parrots until 2005. Their core habitat is shifting from the west to the east. By 2070, there may not be any core habitat left, but up until then, Canber is it. So again, we've sort of by having a landscape through which superb carrots can move, at least they've been able to move to find the Melongalo Valley in Red Hill.

SPEAKER_05 45:48

Hey Michael, very good talk, thank you. Um look, 50 years ago, the um Commonwealth Nursery gave away pyrocanthus and cotoniasters and Rowan trees free for home gardeners, and we're still battling with those weeds. Um however, currently the ACT government's promoting other woody weeds, and uh we're not getting much traction on things like uh calorie pear and Chinese elm and things like that. Do you have any observations on that?

SPEAKER_06 46:20

Yeah, you're you're right. Um in a town like Canberra, if you look at our gardens, we we would have 10,000 different trees and shrubs that have been planted. Of that, only 200 have spread to become weeds, and of those 200, only about half are serious weeds. So you really wonder how stupid have we been that we've picked those reedy weeds and not kept them away, and yet you think, oh, we'll learn from our mistakes, but yeah, we're we're still doing it. You speak to the conservator and you tell him, look, there's a high risk that caliper is going to become a major weed. Stop planting it. And he gets advice back that it hasn't become a weed yet, so we can keep planting it.

SPEAKER_09 47:11

And you think, anyway, don't get me started wrong. You got me started.

SPEAKER_06 47:16

Shut me up.

SPEAKER_09 47:18

Yeah, it makes us angry too.

SPEAKER_02 47:20

Uh yeah, hi Michael. Um we've just had the superb parrots move into Higgins, and they're drinking from uh uh a permanent water source, just a drain, concrete drain, and there's a number of remnant uh uh red gums around the place. I I just I'm trying to get a feel whether we could exp ever expect the um superb parrots to nest right in our suburban parks if there's sufficient uh red gums there. And um how many red gums with hollows would you need if you to expect maybe something like that happening in future?

SPEAKER_06 48:05

Uh so yeah, look, uh because Camber was declared a couple in 1909, that was before diesel tractors and chemical fertilizer. So we never suffered that same level of clearance that elsewhere happened. So we actually are pretty good for hollow-bearing trees in comparison. Per population, you know, we've got 20 breeding pears at one site maybe, and 20 breeding pears at another site, we've got tens of thousands of suitable hollow-bearing trees. So where they're choosing to nest, it's probably not restricted by hollow-bearing trees in the ACT. It's by their numbers and yeah, just where they are. There's a guy who did a thesis, um, Mac, I've just forgotten his full name. Um, but he he was looking, predicting, and and if there's going to be a third breeding area, so they've got breeding area uh Throsby in Mulling and Flat, a breeding area along the Belonglo, and if there's going to be a third one, it's predicted to be down Chuggeron Valley, most probably. Uh but who's who's to say what's in the mind of a secure parrot? So yeah. But they're pro but they're already breeding fairly close, you know, Karma and and that area, which is pretty close to Higgins, so I suspect that that's that's where they'll remain.

SPEAKER_09 49:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 49:34

I think we're just gonna do one more question and then uh we'll wrap up for the evening.

SPEAKER_11 49:41

I think I'm being a proxy questioner. Um Nature Mapper, could there be some kind of crowdfunding arrangement? Has that been explored as an option?

SPEAKER_06 49:55

Uh yes and no. Look, it's got so many images on it and so many people use it. Like we were getting nearly two million page downloads a month that the costs are half a million dollars. Uh so yeah, it's a bit beyond crowdsourcing. We may be looking at crowdsourcing to bring in some features that we've had to remove because of costs. Uh, but at the moment, Aaron's doing a big project for the Queensland Department of Health, and until that's over, I don't think we'll be doing any changes.

SPEAKER_08 50:33

Okay, I think we've had lots of questions. Uh, can we everybody say a big thank you to Michael for an amazing talk?

SPEAKER_09 50:40

Can I just finish something? Sorry.

SPEAKER_06 50:42

Of course, you can finish something, yeah. Look, I'm a Catholic and I no longer go to Mass because I hate the hierarchy. But um, there's a really nice part of Mass where you turn to the person next to you and you say, Peace be with you. If you could just turn to the person next to you and say what gives you hope in the face of climate change, because I know this room is full of people who are doing amazing things. Thank you.

SPEAKER_09 51:15

Thank you.

SPEAKER_08 51:18

Okay, everybody, I might just we'll just interrupt your hopeful moments for a second. I just want to do a quick wrap-up. Um, can everyone say a big thank you again to Michael for a great talk tonight? So just a bit of uh news. So um we at the Conservation Council we're running a program at the moment called Branching Out, which is um walks in nature. Uh and now that you've heard about the Red Hill regenerators, we're looking to have a walk uh at Red Hill. Michael's gonna be running that hopefully in the next couple of weeks. So everybody who's registered here, we will send you details of that uh when the date and uh uh and everything is locked in. So if you want to, you've learnt about it now, now you've got an opportunity to go and see it, uh, and we'll we'll have that information out pretty soon. Um I want to also encourage everybody to get involved in uh all the different ways that you can to support our nature. I know lots of people here are already involved in lots of different ways. Uh, but we at the Cons Council, we have some upcoming events as well as a volunteer event for our Western Edge campaign that's happening next Tuesday. So if you're keen to protect our Western Edge, which is a huge area of Canberra that is under threat from development and needs this kind of work to be happening to it, come along and find out how to get involved in that. I've got flyers for that um up here. Um Kathy here is from SeaChange and Jen's here from the Canberra Environment Center. If you want to get involved in any of the work that they're doing, please go and talk to them. There's always lots of opportunities to get involved. Um, or uh come to, or and or I should say and come to our next um uh impact hour, which is gonna be on Tuesday, the 16th of June, and that is about climate reality and climate hope. So, giving the ending on this slide, I think that's a great one. Um so this is with Mark Howden, uh, and we're gonna be talking about climate reality and climate hope. Um his we've got a lot of stuff that he's talking about, but in an entirely engaging talk, he'll explore where the world is heading under current emissions trajectories, what it means for Australia and the ACT, and the practical opportunities still available to avoid the worst outcomes. And his drawing on decades of work on the forefront of climate science and policy. He'll discuss both the sobering realities of climate change and the encouraging progress already underway from renewable energy transitions and electric vehicle uptake to climate adaptation and the emissions reductions initiatives. So great talk coming up uh in a month's time. So make sure you register for that. Come along. Um for tonight. We're finished off tonight. Continue having your hopeful chats. Um please uh support the bar, get some food, get some dinner, get some drinks. Uh the descent bar have been really great to us, and so we really want to support them. Uh, and enjoy the rest of your evening. We'll see you next time.