Category: Nature NSW

Citizen science, DNA tools, and supporting our next generations of marine researchers in NSW

Posted by on in Autumn 2024Leave a comment

Dr Joseph DiBattista, School of Environment and Science, Griffith University

Home to the billowing sails of the Opera House and the shimmering arches of the Harbour Bridge, Sydney is famed for its magnificent harbour – but what lies beneath the water’s surface? This information might be up to date for some of the more conspicuous and taxonomically resolved groups of resident animals, such as the fishes of Sydney Harbour (we are now up to 675 known fish species, with 10 more new records added since our scientific publication in Marine Pollution Bulletin in December 2022), but what about the inconspicuous and less resolved animals and plants? Moreover, there are large swaths of Sydney Harbour where we have little documented biodiversity data, even at some of the most frequented swimming beaches or adjacent to some of the most heavily populated suburbs.   

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Killalea’s Draft Plan of Management

Posted by on in Autumn 2024Leave a comment

Graham Burgess and Helen Wilson, Illawarra Branch

Killalea Regional Park is the only coastal reserve between Shellharbour, south of Wollongong, and Seven Mile Beach south of Kiama. As housing developments have burgeoned in the former dairy farming area, many coastal environments have been threatened. It’s important that what remains is well protected, so the new Draft Plan of Management (DPOM) is a step in the right direction. 

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Crowdy Bay National Park update

Posted by on in Autumn 2024Leave a comment

Sue Baker, Mid North Coast Branch

This article first appeared in Mid North Coast July 2023 newsletter. Reprinted with permission.

AN EXCITING FIND: Great excitement in the NSW orchid world and amongst rangers in the Hastings Macleay NPWS office has been aroused by Tom Clarke’s discovery of an unusual orchid in the northern section of Crowdy Bay NP during the bush regen camp that he ran in September on behalf of our branch. Tom has become my invaluable right-hand man in our ongoing project for some years now.  

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South Coast Islands New South Wales reprint

Posted by on in Autumn 2024Leave a comment

The sold-out book on the islands of the South Coast of NSW has supported NPA’s marine campaign and is now available again.

By author Helen Moody

One Sunday in 2018 a group of walkers from the National Parks Association Milton Branch stopped at the Wasp Head lookout in Murramarang National Park. Questions were asked about the two islands we could see – what they were called, who named them, why they were nature reserves. These questions had been raised each time we had walked here, so this time I decided to do a little bit of research to find some answers. Little did I know then that the ‘little bit of research’ would become a five year project – leading walks and paddles past 61 islands; writing and self-publishing a book about the islands; selling out the book in five weeks; and finding a publisher who is now marketing a second print run of the book.

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