Bushcare Restores Platypus Country for National Tree Day

Media release – City of Hobart, 28 July 2024

Bushcare restores platypus country for National Tree Day

Bushcare volunteers will descend on the banks of the Hobart Rivulet this Sunday to celebrate National Tree Day and plant almost 1000 native trees, shrubs and grasses.

Once completed the Hobart Rivulet Bushcare group will have put in more than 3500 native plants along the rivulet in just three years. An incredible milestone for the new Bushcare volunteer group.

A Bush Adventures activity program will also be run for the kids.

The volunteers will be led by the City of Hobart Bushcare team and one of Hobart’s newest Bushcare groups, Hobart Rivulet Bushcare.

The National Tree Day event is part of work restoring the health of the Hobart Rivulet, removing environmental weeds and replacing them with local native plant species.

Trees provide shade and stabilise the rivulet bank, while new riparian plants will provide habitat complexity for waterbugs, an important food source for foraging platypus.

The Hobart Rivulet is home to platypus and other aquatic wildlife, and is fed by waters running off kunanyi / Mt Wellington.

Bushcare is the City of Hobart’s largest volunteer program, with more than 800 active participants.

In just one year alone Bushcare volunteers carried out environmental restoration works worth more than $120 000, helping the City of Hobart rid its bushland parks and reserves of environmental weeds, restoring threatened native grasslands on the Queens Domain and restoring degraded bushland and wildlife habitat.

Hobart Rivulet Bushcare was formed in 2021 and holds regular working bees along the rivulet, removing environmental weeds like willow trees, and improving riverside habitat.