Green Army teams lend a hand

Repairing landscapes by clearing away old infrastructure; chipping weeds; monitoring and working on fencing projects are just some of the jobs our Green Army teams have helped with over the past 18 months at Bon Bon Station Reserve.

As reserve managers in a remote region we enjoy working with a diverse community of volunteers, contractors, scientists and students from many walks of life and it’s been great to see a younger generation joining in.

The Green Army are coordinated by Conservation Volunteers Australia (CVA) in South Australia and our local teams are based at Roxby Downs and the Arid Recovery Reserve.

They spend about three weeks of their six month program travelling out to work at Bon Bon.

The first team of five; Susie, Hayden, Tori, Anthony and leader Denni arrived in May last year and one of their projects was restoring an area of land that had been degraded by debris and old rubbish such as wire, glass and scrap metal that had spread through a creek and into the landscape from an old rubbish tip.

They collected up nine trailer loads of rubbish in this area and then marked out a 3km walking track for future visitors to enjoy. The restored area includes a creek-line and a now scenic area of emu bush, salt bush and mulga.

They also helped ecologist Aaron Fenner set up monitoring cameras at two wombat burrows to check on activity and general health.

We were all excited and very pleased to see the cameras capture the activity of a number of healthy wombats out and about in the area.

In December our second Green Army team arrived at Bon Bon and included Sam, Jessie, Tegan and leader Adrian. Although a slightly smaller team, they were no less enthusiastic and worked on fire break maintenance tasks, boundary fence repairs, rabbit management and also revisited some rangelands photo point monitoring sites.

This year we hosted our third Green Army team: Ryan, Georgia, Tyler, Nick and leader Guy. Their major project was helping us with a Department of Planning, Transport and Infrastructure – Bush Heritage fencing project at a rest area on the Stuart Highway. This area needed rehabilitation after impacts from traffic and weeds.

They also helped chip and bag Buffel Grass – an invasive weed that we’ve been working to control along road verges and creek lines.

Thanks Green Army participants, and best wishes for your future careers!

Meanwhile, our fourth Green Army team are starting their six-month program and will be arriving at Bon Bon in November; they'll be welcomed by ecologist Aaron Fenner and field officer Kate Holmes.