Landcare as Community Service - Austin Jones

There is no doubt that Landcare provides a service to the local environment, a helping hand against the threat of weeds, and the Landcarers provide that community service.

Recently, Austin Jones, a local high-school student, joined in Landcaring with our locals as part of his school’s Community Service Assessment. His reflections give us hope for the future.

Fig 5 - Mother of Millions          Fig 6 Austin (foreground) Lois and Rod background

Landcare is a local movement which is dedicated towards maintaining natural wildlife and reducing environmental issues. During my community service assessment, the Landcare group was located at Gurranba Reserve, and was focused on the removal of invasive flora such as Mother of Millions, Black-eyed Susan and Guinea grass.

These invasive species, known as weeds, take over the natural cycle the ecosystem withholds, and enforces an imbalance of biodiversity. Weeds also harm native flora by taking over resources such as sunlight and water and may also carry diseases and toxicity into the natural ecosystems. For example, the mother of millions plant also known as ‘devil’s backbone’ is native to Madagascar, and was introduced to Australia as a garden plant, but is now a serious weed especially along the east coast of New South Wales. If eaten by native fauna, this weed can be very toxic and harmful, therefore it is important to remove these weeds, and ensure the root is removed in the process to disallow regrowth. During my volunteering, our group was able to successfully fill multiple large bags of weeds.

The volunteering was fun, and it involved providing for a good cause of helping with maintaining our natural environment, which encouraged me to continue with the volunteering. It built social connections and enhanced the natural beauty of the reserve we had worked at.

A difficulty I had experienced though was the ease of pulling out the weed from the root. For example, the guinea grass may have a root which is firmly held into the ground, in which I had to use a shovel to forcibly dig around the root and remove it that way, which induced difficulty. Another example was the Black-eyed Susan, a large weed which wraps a far distance from its root in the ground and all the way up and around a tree in some cases, wrapping around and strangling the tree branch. This would provide difficulty in attempting to unravel the plant to allow myself to eventually find the root and pull it out. But overall, it was a great experience, a lot of progress was made and I had learnt a lot about invasive species in our area.

Before and after Black-eyed Susan removal