2024-02 Rabbit Sweep Catalogue Workshop
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Subject: 2024-02 Rabbit Sweep Catalogue Workshop
Date: 14 February 2024 3:19:48 pm AEDT
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Rabbit Sweep
- a BLG Rabbit Action Group Project.
This newsletter is for those interested in the development of a whole-of-peninsula rabbit control project. If you do not want to receive the newsletter, please let us know.
Friday 16th February, 2024
Catalogue Workshop
As a result of lots of discussions following the workshop in December, it seems we might be making progress!
The approach where an entity, like a Landcare, works out how to deal with pests and then tries to impose their strategies has proven, sadly time and again, to not achieve the results often wanted.
Clearly, if we want a healthy environment, we have too many rabbits on the Peninsula. And that in fact means too many foxes, too many feral cats, and far too many habitat weeds! The only resources we have to change this situation are people and we are engaged with far too few of them.
So where are we with the Rabbit Sweep?
Our task is to develop a long-term strategy by the middle of this year. We have identified one important way of describing those with whom we need to work - committed pest managers and others who are not committed. We need everyone's help, ultimately for everyone's benefit.
We have two aspects to our work that have priority and they are based on some simple principles.
Catalogue of Online Resources
For those wanting to clear the land of pests, it is possible to find no end of different articles with free advice online. The users' problem, however, is deciding which resource is correct, which suits their context, their available resources, their finances, soil types, and more.
The solution, we have decided, is to make a catalogue of all the resources out there so users can approach it with their interests in mind, and choose which resources to use. To that end we have already started to build the catalogue.
Once we have the attributes of resources sorted, we can populate it with our own resources, those we find on the web, or even perhaps some that we can't find but think would be very useful. By using a catalogue approach, we can avoid having to re-publish resources and can see what is good and useful and what is missing.
That work constitutes a major effort which will be easy if we all help - so please consider how you can help with this task.
On Friday 16th February, at 10.00 am at the Leopold Library we will have a one hour session about how to make the catalogue combining those at the Library and anyone on Zoom who is interested. See the Zoom details below. The workshop will go from 10.00 am to 1 .00 pm and if you can help us, that would be wonderful.
Engaging landholders in the practice of pest management
"Nothing about us without us" is becoming a familiar cry and, in our case, it explains why the rabbits are doing so well. We cannot impose pest management on people who are busy, ....
Given that Bellarine Landholders are, in fact, responsible for managing invasive pests on their properties, we like many others are struggling to convince those who are not interested to help us sweep away the pests. But we are sure of one thing - we will only succeed in this if at least most landholders unite to help sweep the Peninsula.
We have been working on possibilities for engaging with landholders and what we might invite them to do with us. This will be the subject of a workshop in March.
In recent weeks, we have been working on designing a project that will help us co-design pest management with landholders we meet. We will submit an application to the Department of Agriculture in the next few days. We are asking for someone to help us discover good ways to bring landholders together so they can talk about what they would like to do and how.
This will be an even more interesting exercise if we can attract a diverse group of landholders, including the Traditional Owners, and if we can support all interest groups and 'friends-of' groups to work with us.
The webinar/meeting date is Friday, February 16, 10.00 am to 11.00 am and at the Library until 1.00 pm.
You can contact us at any time:
If you can convince a friend to help us, please don't hesitate - this is a big job and we need all the help we can get.
Zoom details
Topic: Rabbit Sweep Zoom Meeting
Time: Feb 16, 2024 10:00 - 11.00 am, Australia/Melbourne
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87616405747?pwd=Sk9GRUNXUFdPdDVFQ1VTTmdqVFJOdz09
Meeting ID: 876 1640 5747
Passcode: 877682
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Meeting ID: 876 1640 5747
Passcode: 877682
contact: rabbits @ Bellarinemac.org.au