Green Army teams work to preserve Aboriginal culture
Close to 5,000 plants of 54 different species have been planted and 10 hectares rehabilitated to date, by Green Army teams hosted by Queensland’s Girringun Aboriginal Corporation.
By the end of 2017, the Corporation will have hosted seven Green Army projects over two and a half years. The participants, aged between 17 and 24, are gaining invaluable experience, with habitat restoration, revegetation and other natural resource management activities, and benefiting from Traditional Owner mentoring.
Complementing the Girringun Ranger Programme, the projects involving Green Army teams are taking place in the National and World Heritage listed Wet Tropics of Queensland and focus on environmentally and culturally significant areas across the region identified for management by Traditional Owners. Working with Green Army service provider ManpowerGroup and Landcare Australia, Girringun members, Traditional Owners, Aboriginal groups, government agencies and the community, the goal is to promote and preserve Aboriginal culture to guarantee its survival.
The Upper Burdekin Green Army project team developing their skills.
One of the projects, the Habitat Restoration and Revegetation on Girringun Country project, has already been completed. Through targeted revegetation and weed control, this project restored 10 hectares of habitat for the southern cassowary, which is only found in the Wet Tropics, and the mahogany glider, which is endemic to Ingham and Tully.
Two projects are currently in progress, the Upper Burdekin Catchment Water Quality Monitoring project, where a revegetation plan for the Upper Burdekin catchment is being assessed, along with supporting native habitat for the declining northern quoll, eastern curlew and red goshawk. The Mahogany Glider and Southern Cassowary Recovery Population and Habitat Monitoring project is working to protect and restore the habitat for the two species.
The upcoming Green Army projects include: protecting ecosystems and the habitat of green turtle, spectacled flying fox and eastern curlew through feral animal management on Hinchinbrook Island; and surveying habitat and populations of small mammals, including the northern bettong, the black-footed tree-rat and yellow-bellied glider on Girringun Country.
