Climate theme at annual seminar
A22nd annual Wimmera Biodiversity Seminar at Rupanyup next week will have ‘A Climate For Change’ theme.
The September 5 seminar, at Rupanyup Community Centre, will include a day session, a field trip and an evening dinner session.
Organising committee member La Vergne Lehmann said this year’s theme reflected the social, environmental and climatic changes that were occurring ‘more clearly than ever’.
She said climate change was at the forefront of politics around the world, along with changing environmental practices, a shift in thinking and the role of indigenous people and how women in society dealt with this change.
“Apart from seeing a change in our climate, we have also seen a marked change in the community attitude to the environment,” she said.
“This year’s theme is an acknowledgement that maintaining biodiversity is a critical part of caring for our environment – one of the main reasons why so many of us choose to live in the Wimmera.”
Mrs Lehmann said society’s definitions of ‘nature’, ‘natural’ and ‘wilderness’ were changing, as Tim Low, a keynote speaker at this year’s event would discuss.
She said Low’s book The New Nature explored how Australian animals had adapted to changes humans have made on the landscape.
She said he challenged people to think about how they had created habitat that many species were gaining benefit from and how animals and plants had been benefitting from humans since Aboriginal people began management burning of wilderness areas.
This year’s event will feature a range of speakers including; Paul Foreman, Grasslands in the Wimmera; Paul Downey, environmental consultant; Paul Fennell, Wimmera Catchment Management Authority; Nigel Binney, Gwmwater; Ben Muir and Darren Griffin, Wimmera CMA and Barengi Gadjin Land Council; Ben Zeeman, Glenelg Hopkins CMA; Matt Rees, University of Melbourne; Deon Gilbert, Zoos Victoria; and Tracey Dellbridge Gray, Homeward Bound participant.
An afternoon tour will feature a property protected by a Trust For Nature. The landholder and a Trust for Nature representative will discuss the successes and failures of a patch of revegetation and explore old growth buloke woodland and black box swamp.
A special feature this year will also be the launch of Steffen Schultz’s new Grampians flora book ‘A journey to Gariwerd colours’.
Biodiversity seminar participants will receive a handcrafted mug made by potter Wendy Mcinnes.
Organisers will also give away creeping boobialla, ‘Myoporum parvifolium’ plants to encourage people to bring threatened species in the region into gardens.
Wimmera CMA, Department of Environment Land, Water and Planning, Trust for Nature, Gwmwater, Yarrilinks Landcare Network and the Grampians Central West Waste and Resource Recovery Group are supporting the seminar.
Tickets are $99 for the day and evening, $65 for the day only and $50 for the evening only. Tickets are available online at wimmerabiodiversityseminar19tickets. eventbrite.com.au.