A huge thank you to Dan (from Forests First) who has been working super hard on the riparian zone. With the wet conditions making it difficult to reach some areas of the property over the past 2 years, and then the flood taking everyone’s focus away, a forest of the horrendous Devil’s Figs had taken over to the west side of Araucarias creek.
These horrific plants are set to be THE worst weeds in our area. With seed carried by birds they are spreading widely and they grow so rapidly they can reach 2m in a year, with huge spikes making handling them difficult and painful! And if you don’t poison them they just come back.
So we are incredibly grateful to Dan for all his hard work and care for Araucaria.
The saddest thing is that in that Western side of the creek there is a huge tree that has died, probably due to water logging in the floods. It’s death has opened up an area that was previously full canopy. It had been such a magical zone, with Staghorns, Elkhorns and Birds Nest Ferns. We are pretty sure (from memory) it was a sygium. Very sad… but we now need to nurture other natives to take its place.
Dan has done an amazing job pulling, drilling, cutting, poisoning and hunting out all those little elusive buggers.
And we haven’t been avoiding them either… more on our activities soon.