Wetlands’ new facilities to open
Since the decommissioning of Lake Mokoan in 2010 ecological scientists working at Winton Wetlands have been working to restore the area’s native flora and fauna.
The wetlands, which was destroyed by the construction of the artificial lake in the late 1960s, is the largest wetland restoration project in the southern hemisphere.
The wetlands has been successful in becoming a destination for school groups, scientists, music festivals, TV and film productions.
The Mokoan Hub Cafe is well frequented and a new art trail is being developed at the site.
Once complete it will feature 12 artworks by a variety of Yorta Yorta and Bpangarang people, and will be a drawcard for visitors to the local silo art, and street art trails.
The committee is also developing the former Lake Mokoan Yacht Club into an educational hub and laboratory.
The site will include indoor and outdoor spaces where school groups can take part in tasks; as well as offering lab space for a variety of things including providing a quarantine where species due be re-introduced can be held prior to their release into
targeted areas of the site.
The Wetlands committee is holding a science forum this week, which is something that has occurred regularly since 2010.
Lisa Farnsworth said this week’s forum was initially cited to take place last year, but had to be postponed because of COVID-19.
“We hold these forums annually and each has a different theme, generally relating to an area of wetlands management,” Dr Farnsworth said.
“This years theme is ‘Managing wetlands in times
of uncertainty’.
“Within that overarching theme, we have key subsets of speakers.
“We have speakers talking about re-wilding of iconic species. We have a kangaroo expert.
“There's people speaking about freshwater fish. There’s people speaking about the work they’re doing on freshwater turtle conservation.
“And then there’s a bit of (focus) on the Growling Grass Frog, which is where we jump in and chat about what we’re working on out here... and within the region.
“In the afternoon the forum is very much about not for profits and community groups and how they go about rolling out restoration in different areas.
“It’s about sharing information with like-minded people, and talking about what each group is doing for restoration in their space, how well that has worked, and how things can be improved.”
Dr Farnsworth said on top of holding forums at Winton Wetlands, its scientists would also travel to similar forums at other restoration sites.
“Ecological Society
Australia, they they run a forum each year, we (also) recently presented at the Victorian Biodiversity Conference,” she said.
“So we do get the opportunity to go out to actually chat about what we're doing off-site.
“But this is a great venue to host an event like this, so we always enjoy these forums.”
One area that has caused some confusion within the local community has been the ephemeral nature of Winton Wetlands.
Winton Wetlands chief executive officer Sue Lebish said ephemeral systems dominated the landscape in Australia.
“They are often undervalued both intrinsically, and in terms of their contribution of ecosystem services to the broader landscape compared to other wetland systems,” Ms Lebish said.
Winton Wetlands is an ephemeral wetland system.
This means that there will be times when the wetlands dry out such as after periods of low rainfall.
Then the wetlands will fill again following rainfall in the catchment area.
These are called “filling” events.
Drying is very important to the wetland system as it: • Triggers organisms to lay desiccation-resistant eggs, or plants to set seeds in response to the lowering water levels; • Stimulates edge and wetland plant colonisation; and • Causes dried out sediments on exposed wetland beds to allow nutrients to be transformed and prepare the system for the next filling phase.
“At the moment there is water across certain swamps within Winton Wetlands, but with the exceptional wet summer we have had, grasses that are at least a metre tall are obscuring the water from sight,” Ms Labish said.