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Work Day Reminder, October 15 2022
The next monthly work day will be from 9.00am – noon this coming Saturday.
We’ll start with some planting and when that runs out move onto releasing plants by the Inwoods Rd entrance to the wetland. If you arrive late there will be a notice on the Education Centre door indicating where we have gone.
All tools provided. It may be wet underfoot, so gumboots are advised. If you don’t own any we do have some for loan. Please bring your own gloves if you can.
Latest News
Report on TFC Public Planting Day, 17 September
We were treated to a fine morning with little wind for our big event of the year. This time we were not planting at Travis Wetland but nearby, in a reserve on the western side of Anzac Drive.
It was an early start for Trees for Canterbury, CCC rangers and volunteers to get everything we needed in place. This planning paid off and most plants and guards were set out by the time keen planters of all ages started to arrive. We estimate that about 90 people attended and spread out across the site. There were great views of nearby ponds as we dug into the various soil types. Some unlucky folk had to work very hard to make holes in concrete-like gravel areas.
Thanks to Trees for Canterbury for providing the 1200 plants. These included sedges and flax for wet areas and a variety of tree types for drier zones. We hope that they will grow as well as those planted a little further south a few years ago.
All this hard work made refreshments very welcome. he barbeque team of Al, Denise, Yvette and Jason had worked hard during the morning to provide plenty of sausages, falafel and soft drinks just when we needed them.
This year is a special one, being the 30th anniversary of Travis Wetland Trust and the 25th anniversary of the City Council managing Travis as a Nature Heritage Park. Representatives from these organisations and Trees for Canterbury spoke about achievements over this time as we licked the tomato sauce from our fingers. Then it was time to tuck into a giant celebratory fruit cake.
Thanks to everyone who came along. Lets see what we can do over the next 30 years!
Article: Sue Britain, Images: John Dunlop
Trust AGM and Public Talk
The Travis Wetland Trust AGM is at 7pm on Tuesday 18 October. We’ll get the formalities for the year over as quickly as possible and move on to a presentation by wildlife photographer Greg McKenzie. Greg has many beautiful images taken at Travis; mostly birds but also other interesting things that live there. Some of Greg’s images were used on the revamped panels in the Information Centre.
iNaturalist and Citizen Science
A recent article by Shanti Mathias on The Spinoff caught my eye. It’s about iNaturalist and its relevance to citizen science. Here’s a couple of quotes from it:
“It’s a global revolution in biology around the world,” says Jon Sullivan, a senior lecturer in ecology at Lincoln University and one of the team who operates the Aotearoa “node” of iNaturalist, a global platform. The data from my observations as well as thousands of others can be used by scientists here, be fed into international biodiversity databases, and – if the discovery is, say, a new weed – reported to the Ministry for Primary Industries.
Ultimately, however, citizen science projects open the door to new kinds of scientific participation and possibility. “I can imagine vastly more knowledge being acquired – it’s still the tip of the iceberg,” says Sullivan. Our phones and devices might always be with us, but so is the natural world, ants and houseplants, fruit and fir trees, parks and farmland. The little world of digital possibilities that we keep tucked in our pockets can make the living breathing planet much more interesting.
The article has some excellent data visualisations and even if you don’t think your next career will be as a citizen scientist the iNaturalist phone app is great for letting you know what it is you’re looking at. Who knows where that will lead you.
Image: Archi Banal
Images from Grahame
