The Annual General Meeting of the Friends was held at the CFA Rooms on Sunday 23 February. 33 Members and visitors attended the meeting. The Minutes of the previous AGM were approved after which Keith presented the President’s Report.
President’s Report
The Friends of Eastern Otways have had another extremely busy year and your Committee has worked hard to ensure we have a meaningful and interesting agenda of events and programs.
Our environmental weeding on the second Tuesday of each month has regularly attracted 15 to 20 volunteers. These volunteers working with our Parks colleagues have continued to remove weed plants. This past year has seen activities on Forest Rd and O’Donohues, Anglesea and Moggs Creek amongst others. Our Moggs Creek activities has also included 6 sessions with our long-term partner, namely, the students from McKillop College.
Our Flora and Fauna Monitoring has seen a continued program of camera trapping around the Airey’s Inlet/Anglesea area. As part of this program we have purchased 2 new 4G cameras to supplement our older cameras. Rob Shepherd is now leading our camera monitoring and I thank Rob for taking on this task. I want to thank Craig Grabham who has led this work for the previous two years as well as acting as the person who managed our Parks Connect work. Craig is stepping down from the Committee today. Thank you Craig and thanks to Paul Wright who will take up the Park Connect role. The annual koala count on the Grey River Rd in June saw an increase in numbers compared to 2023. The annual count of the orchid Caladenia maritima took place in September and October with over 1000 plants counted. A new species of helmet orchid was recorded in the park and additional Thelymitra species may also have been recorded. Thank you to Kaye Traynor, Margaret MacDonald and Alison Watson for their contribution to flora monitoring.
Working with Barwon Water and Angair we are in advanced discussion to establish floating vegetated platforms in the Painkalac Dam to encourage waterbirds. Thank you to John Lenegan for leading our interaction.
Our outings have seen wildflower walks, night spotting, fauna monitoring and walking several of the trails highlighted in our guidebook. We have had good numbers of attendees at our events and sales of the guidebooks have been strong.
We provided support in the form of a laptop and books for the group Kids Go Bush in Anglesea and had a wildflower walk with the children there.
The website is being well used and we thank Rod Brooks for his work on maintaining and updating our pages. In 2024 our newsletter has had a new editor and a big thank you to Nan McNab for her work. I am sure you all appreciated the content and format of the quarterly newsletter.
We are in a strong financial position returning a surplus of over $2000 for the year and have almost $20000 in the bank. A big thank you to Ellen Doxey our Treasurer and former Secretary who is stepping down today.
I’d like to thank the whole Committee for their contributions and a shout out to our new Secretary Colleen Miller and we look forward to 2025!
The Treasurer’s Report was approved with a year end surplus of $2,396.
Membership will remain at $15 for 2025.
Isabelle Kielbaska presented the Ranger’s Report.
She provided an update of the Parks’ conservations projects including:
- Protecting Biodiversity Program
- Deer Control
- Hooded Plovers
She stressed Parks Victoria’s commitment to controlling invasive weeds, protecting high value flora and fauna, indigenous vegetation and mammal refuge habitats. She expressed appreciation for the contribution made by the Friends to important conservation projects in the Park.
Chris Morrisey took the Chair for the election of office bearers.
Office Bearers and Committee for 2025:
President Keith McLean
Vice-President Rob Shepherd
Treasurer Bernard Skahill
Secretary Colleen Miller
Assistant Secretary Kaye Traynor
Committee Members – Margaret MacDonald, Alison Watson, Paul Wright, John Lenagan, Heather Leslie.
We extend a warm welcome to Bernie and Heather to the Committee.
Following the Meeting we were entertained and informed by a presentation from our Guest speaker, Dr Erin Nash from Parks Victoria. Erin’s role is to project manage Parks Victoria’s large, landscape-scale conservation programs in the Otway Ranges and Shipwreck Coast.
Erin highlighted work in the Otway Eden Program which involves monitoring and control of established weed species such as sallow wattle and boneseed as well as monitoring new and emerging weed species.
There are 46 key identified weed species which are known in the park and a priority is given to protecting high value conservation areas in consultation with DEECA, the community and local experts. A new technique using Infra Red spectral imaging has allowed Parks to identify areas infested with sallow wattle. Erin also highlighted the extensive work done in tracking, monitoring and removing feral animals such as foxes and cats including the use of dogs.
The Otway Ark Program monitors just under 400 camera trapping sites across the Otways. Parks are working with experts to develop AI methods to speed up and enhance detection and classification of terrestrial wildlife species in camera trap images.
Erin’s talk was much appreciated by the audience and highlighted the enormous contribution made by Parks staff to maintaining our environment in a time of limited budgets.
Keith McLean