YOUNG people involved in the next Greening Australia Green Army project in Lyons have started on-ground work in the Northern Midlands.
A Greening Australia team has been working on a landscape scale conservation program in the Northern Midlands to restore and revegetate the valley between the Western and Eastern Tiers identified as a biodiversity hotspot.
“This latest Green Army project team will help continue work on revegetating 250 hectares and improving another 800 hectares of remnant vegetation in the area,’’ says Federal Lyons MP Eric Hutchinson.
Young Green Army team members will help with the regeneration and revegetation work taking place on a grand scale in the area.
They will build and install individual plant guards and cages for hundreds of widely spaced seedlings to restored degraded woodlands as well as collecting seeds and managing weeds.
They will also help with flora and fauna surveys as well as monitoring and evaluation programs with project scientific officers and partnering University of Tasmania researchers led by Greening Australia Tasmanian director Sebastian Burgess.
Mr Hutchinson said that he was looking forward to seeing first-hand the benefits and improvements to the local environment from the Green Army team’s work in the next six months.
“These participants will not only be generating real environment and conservation benefits for our community, they will also be gaining valuable practical training and experience to help them prepare for the workforce of further training to improve their career opportunities,’’ Mr Hutchinson said.
The Green Army is a key Federal Government commitment with $525 million budgeted over four years.
“The program encourages practical, grassroots action to support local environment and heritage conservation projects across Australia to provide training to more than 15,000 young Australians by 2018,” Mr Hutchinson said.
Further opportunities to join a Green Army project can be found online at www.environment.gov.au/green-army
FEDERAL Lyons MP Eric Hutchinson
