By Jodie Symonds
A TEAM of 10 Californian Conservation Corps volunteers removed more than 15,000 sweet pittosporum seedlings from Cardinia Dam earlier this month.
The work took over three days and was part of a new Pittosporum Control Program in the Dandenong Ranges.
The control program is focused on public and private lands along the sweet pittosporum invasion track from Menzies Creek to the Cardinia Dam.
The weed achieves dominance and with them – there will be no understory plants, native shrubs, wild-flowers or native orchids.
The sweet pittosporum is an Australian native, which evolved in South Eastern Queensland and then migrated south across the cool valleys.
According to Dandenong Ranges group, StopPitt, the Menzies Creek pittosporum study site was established after one tree was planted in a Menzies Creek garden about 70 years ago.
Blackbirds then carried it over the garden fence and resulting in about 6000 pittosporum seedlings per hectare 200 metres away, around the study site.
Agricultural scientist Jeff Walker in the 1940s as a child and again 70 years later, permitted the observations, and then led to a citizen science project with the Menzies Creek Primary school in 2012/13.
The study led to a research paper with Professor Ros Gleadow from Monash University and to a $50,000 grant four months later, as well as the formation of StopPitt.
The Pittosporum Control Program was funded by a recent grant of $250,000 from the Federal Landcare budget, which was announced recently by the then Environment Minister, Greg Hunt, at the pittosporum study site in Menzies Creek.
StopPitt are looking for volunteers to join the program.
To register your interest, email stoppitt@internose.on.net
