About some of the work that the Friends of Minak REserve have been engaged with.

Darcy Duggan, the coordinator of the Friends of Minak Reserve.

Some of this work has included the restoration of a highly weed invaded site to the north of Minak Reserve. Part of the site was a degraded section of Damp Forest, which was a mass of blackberry three metres high under the forest canopy. This had been sprayed with Garlon, which had successfully killed it, but then a highly flammable mass of Wire Grass Tetrarrhena juncea two metres high grew, causing concern to the local fire officer.

Darcy says that following up on new blackberry seeding, and just by“scuffing around” he managed to set the Wire Grass back, and subsequently ground-ferns started to emerge. After keeping the weed control up tree ferns werestarting to recolonise.

Further north some gullies which were full of mats of Wandering Creeper *Tradescantia fluminensis had been gradually restored by raking the Wandering Creeper down into the gully in stages, and allowing recolonisation by indigenous plants. Follow-up handweeding had clearly been necessary. Re-colonisation of the gully by tree ferns was being hastened by planting Soft Tree Ferns Dicksonia antarctica rescued from gardens being destroyed by renovations.

Darcy notes that the Rough Tree Ferns Cyathea australis which were recovering on their own, could not be transplanted in this way.

The northerly extent - the edge of the Dandenong Ranges National Park, has weed-infested and nutrient-laden drainage water causing a wedge of weed infestation deeply running into the park, and very poor mowing practices for a fire-break on the edge of the park were converting the native understorey of the Wet Forest EVC to weed-scapes.