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Queens Jubilee Tree Plantings
During 2023 SLNC organised 5 planting events at Opossum Creek Bushcare site and with the help of wonderful volunteers planted 2000 trees, all in celebration of the late Queen Elizabeth II Platinum Jubilee (70th).
This work was funded through the Planting Trees for The Queen’s Jubilee grant through The Australian Government.
SLNC Platypus Watch finds platypus in our creeks
Springfield Lakes Nature Care has been conducting annual platypus watch surveys in August since 2022 and have recorded a number of platypus. See ABC news report and some photos from previous events.
Bushcarers’ Day Out – public tree planting
On 13 September 2020, 37 volunteers from the public helped Opossum Creek Bushcare to plant 550 native trees and shrubs.
Launch of “Birds of Greater Springfield – a birdwatching guide
SLNC, with funding from Ipswich Council, has developed a “Birds of Greater Springfield” birdwalk booklet for 6 sites in the Greater Springfield region, with directions and photos of the birds one is likely to see on each walk. Booklet can be downloaded here.
We had 5 guest speakers, Ipswich City Mayor Teresa Harding, Professor Hugh Possingham, birdwatcher Peter Gelding (SLNC member), local veterinarian Jeannet Kessels, and Bill Heck who spoke about how to grow a bird friendly garden (download brochure here). Also in the photo is Michael Kruck (SLNC member) who developed a Native Bird computer screensaver, Graeme Donaldson who was one the photographers who kindly provided photos for the booklet, and Luise Manning (President SLNC).
After the presentations, everyone ventured across the road to use the Birdwalk booklet at one of the 6 sites – Spring Lake. 14 species were observed, including Little Black Cormorants and a Great Cormorant.
Birdwalk sites include:
- White Rock Spring Mountain Conservation Estate (between Regatta & Discovery Lakes
- Regatta & Discovery Lake
- Spring Lake Parklands
- Creekside Parkland
- Robelle Domain
- Opossum Creek Parklands
How to Build a Frog Hotel
You can build your very own frog hotel to attract frogs to your backyard and keep them safe from predators.
Watch this video to see how easy it is to build.
Then build your own using these instructions “How to Build a Frog Hotel“.
Check out more information about the Frogs of Greater Springfield and how you can help map their occurrence under Our Projects page.
Opossum Creek Bushcare
SLNC is now part of the Ipswich City Council “Bushcare” Program, looking after a patch of native bush along Opossum Creek in Brookwater.
Clean Up Australia Day 2020
Big Clean Up around the lakes nets great litter results!
Sunday March 1st 2020 was Clean Up Australia Day and 177 people “stepped up to clean up” and helped Springfield Lakes Nature Care (SLNC) to clean up the area around Regatta and Discovery Lakes, and a separate area at Spring Mountain. This was the 5th Clean Up Australia Day event organised by SLNC President Luise Manning, growing from only about a dozen people in 2016, to the numbers seen today.
132 people, including 54 children younger than 13 years volunteered to clean up around the Lakes and surrounding streets, whilst 45 members of the Springfield Malayalee Association (including 25 children) cleaned up the streets of Spring Mountain.
In addition, 3 adult paddlers collected material floating in the two lakes.
All litter collected was brought down to the Discovery Lake carpark for the audit report to be conducted. The rubbish was disposed of in the skip-bin provided by Ipswich City Council (except for the tyres which were disposed of separately as they do not go into landfill).
In comparison to last year’s litter audit, there was a distinct decrease in the number and proportion of drink containers of the type that can be recycled through the COEX “cash for containers” scheme. Anecdotal comments suggest that the number of people littering their neighbourhood by discarding drink bottles whilst walking or driving through has stayed the same, but community and environmentally aware citizens are picking up these bottles and cans before they make it into the natural environment and our lakes. There was also less builders waste (such as polystyrene, PVC pipes and plastic wrapping), probably because almost all building on “The Peninsula” has been completed. Only 3 supermarket/retail bags collected, showing that the plastic bag ban is working.
The dominant form of litter was small and large bits of paper, newspapers, cardboard/polystyrene fast food containers/packaging, and COEX drink containers. There were also plenty of plastic straws, and this needs last item to be the focus of future efforts to reduce plastic in our environment. Unusual items collected this year were 1 bicycle, 2 car tyres, 1 chair and 1 garden hose. Not quite as impressive as last year’s half kayak.
Some 19 full garbage bags of litter were collected, including 10 bags of recyclable COEX containers which were donated to SLNC.
SLNC gratefully thanks all those that turned up to help clean up our neighbourhood, the Springfield and Goodna Girl Guides, Redbank Plains, Goodna and Camira Scouts, Greater Springfield Rotary Club, and the Springfield Malayalee Association.
We would like to thank our sponsors, Lendlease and IGA Springfield for supporting the event and providing the refreshments and fruit and Milton Dick MP for the cake for morning tea. We also thank Ipswich City Council for the funding from the Environmental Grant which helped cover the cost of core flute signs and flyers to promote the event and the provision of a professional first aid officer.
If anyone else would like to donate plastic and glass bottles and aluminium cans to SLNC and help us run environmental events, then please take them to the Night Owl at Spring Lake Metro, or another COEX deposit centre, and using our registration code “C10002285” the funds will be direct credited to SLNC’s bank account.
Threatened Species Day 7 Sept 2019
This event, the first ever Threatened Species Day event by SLNC, was held to commemorate the 10th Anniversary of the deaths of Lloyd Bird and Ric Nattras, two hard working environmentalists that had a lasting effect on the natural environment in the Greater Springfield area.
Their achievements were recognised by the planting of two Birdwing Butterfly vines, which we hope will attract the gorgeous Richmond Birdwing Butterfly back into the area.
The event was held at Opossum Creek Parklands at Scoparia Drive, Brookwater. Groups that contributed with information stalls included:
- Queensland Mycological Society (fungi)
- Birds Queensland
- Koala Rescue
- National Parks Association of Queensland
- SEQ Frog Society
- West Moreton Landcare
- Queensland Water and Land Carers (QWaLC)
.
Myna traps
To catch common (Indian) mynas – which are becoming a major feral pest to our native wildlife
The Event concluded with a short walk to the Lloyd Bird revegetation site. This is a popular spot for little birds and several species were seen through binoculars.
Waterbug Training
Many aquatic ecologists use waterbugs to tell them how polluted the water is in the streams that the waterbugs live in. What are waterbugs? The official term is macroinvertebrates. Marcro meaning “large”, and invertebrate meaning “has no backbone”; or in other words, insects, insect larvae, spiders, mites, worms, yabbies and prawns.
On Sunday 25th August, experienced aquatic ecologist Cecil Ellis came from Sydney to train an enthusiastic group of volunteers from SLNC, neighbouring environmental groups and Scouts and Girl Guide leaders in waterbug sampling and identification.
The main aim of the Waterbug Blitz program is to train people to become citizen scientists to captured data about the water quality of creeks and rivers across Australia. The workshop was made possible through funding from Ipswich City Council.
Each of the different waterbug species can tolerate living in water of different quality. Some species can only live in water that is near pristine, whist others can survive in water that is of poor quality. The data provided the group with an insight into the total biodiversity of what is living in the water. The abundance of waterbugs, total waterbug diversity, and type (taxa) of animals are combined to give a SIGNAL score (from 0 to 10) for the waterway. SIGNAL stands for “’Stream Invertebrate Grade Number – Average Level”. If one finds a wide variety of taxa and species including those that can only tolerate clean water, then the habitat will get a high score, 8 – 10. However, if only a few species are found, or only those species that can tolerate living in poor water quality, then the score will much lower, 1 – 3.
After collecting our samples – in this case from a reach of Opossum Creek above Discovery Lake – we sat down to identify what we had. Whenever we saw something moving, we caught it and put it in our sample tray for closer identification. We were assisted in this through the use of the Waterbug App on our smart phones. The app took us through a series of taxonomy questions based on physical characteristics that allowed us to identify the taxa of the organism down to Order, and sometimes Family level (but not species). The data was entered into our smart phones, summarised into a SIGNAL score and then sent off (including photos) to the national database.
When the sampling site was first scouted there was flowing water. However, by the time of the training we were lucky that there was still some water left ponded in the creek. The expert said that in this semi-urbanised environment, and without flowing water, that the water quality would be poor – especially with regard to the dissolved oxygen that all aquatic organisms need to breathe. Nevertheless, we found 22 different taxa, including caddis fly larvae, dragonfly larvae, damsel fly larvae, mites, a blood worm, freshwater prawns and two types of yabbies. However, the SIGNAL score came out as 3.4, which is regarded as poor, although the expert said that it was better than he expected.
His parting words were – after it rains, we should go out again and practice our new skills. We’re still waiting for some decent rain to get the creek flowing again!
NATIONAL TREE DAY
Saturday 29th July Springfield Lakes joined forces with Scouts Camira and the Springfield Lakes Girl Cuides to plant some native plants in a section of parkland near the Promenade. Over 30 people attended the event planting 3 Buckingham Celissium, 40 grevillieas and 30 native grasses.