Kids all smiles at community planting day
Kids all smiles at community planting day
30 October 2012
Students from Dayboro State School this morning were all smiles at a community planting day held adjacent to North Pine Dam, which is set to enhance koala habitat and improve catchment health.
Around 50 grade 5-6 children got their hands dirty planting nearly 500 trees at Gold Scrub, near Samsonvale.
The project is the first planting in an innovative program between Energex, Seqwater, SEQ Catchments and local environment groups such as Pine Rivers Catchments Association which will deliver environmental offsets for Energex’s capital work projects and allow for increased vegetation cover and levels of protection within water supply catchment areas.
The project site, which extends over a 14ha area of land owned by Seqwater, has been identified as a key koala habitat area, a threatened species in South East Queensland. The planting of a variety of eucalypt species will provide key koala habitat areas and fodder trees, whilst also playing a role in soil health, water quality and other associated benefits for flora and fauna.
SEQ Catchments Farm Forestry and Vegetation Officer Paul Daly who has been managing the project said that it was great to see the children so enthusiastic to participate.
‘‘Having this sort of day for the local school children is a great way to get them actively learning about the importance of looking after our catchments,’’ Paul said.
‘‘The benefits will be widely felt throughout the community and the trees that the children have planted today will help keep our soils healthy, play a role in keeping our water clean by filtering the water that travels down the catchment and provide major improvement in koala habitat. It’s really a win-win situation.’’
‘‘We are now going to maintain these trees so that they have the best possible chance of survival. We have already had a good growth rate from trees that were planted a couple of years ago. And hopefully we can come and do some koala spotting in a few years time.’’
Energex will offset any unavoidable impacts to natural habitat when carrying out electricity network activities – such as overhead or underground powerline projects or new substations as close as possible to impacted areas.
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