General News
12 June, 2026
Park friends
BARRY'S CORNER: Looking after our parks and public lands takes a lot of work and effort by assigned staff.
There are always weeds and pests popping up at various refuges.
In an effort to pick up some of the work load a group of interested people have been drawn together to become a Friends of the park.
These friends select the type of work they think would be useful and discuss it with the park management who might suggest modifications and if it is possible the project would go ahead.
A group has been functioning at the Wyperfeld National Park for 50 years.
In that time many trees and vegetation has been planted to the extent that it is hard to pick the original bush from the newly installed.
Some of the other projects the friends have worked on include fencing to protect new seedlings, removing horehound, minor improvements to the buildings in the camp grounds, monitoring wildlife and birds and developing visitor information.
The main group meets over the Kings Birthday weekend and gets involved.
There is a mix of people who travel from the metropolitan districts while an increasing number of friends come from local areas.
They carry out tasks in a similar method to a landcare program.
A lot of other parks have active friends and set their own program, timetables and type of work.
Some meet monthly and make a real difference to the weed spread and rabbit populations.
Depending on the skills of the members they can carryout some serious maintenance.
People involved with a friends group can feel satisfied with their works completed and doing work in one of the big assets of the nation.
Catching cats and foxes is not a job for volunteers but I am assured there is a program being developed that should be available over next couple of years that will help eradicate cats effectively, and that is great.
There is also more work going into rabbit controls which is encouraging after the calici and flea efforts are running out of effectiveness.
One of the stalling points to implementing some new projects are ethical interventions.
These can hold up a project for months and have a lot of conditions imposed that make it expensive or difficult to implement.
How can it be more humane to cart a captured wild cat for a vet to put it down than dealing with it on the spot.