NTVLC conducted a Citizen Science workshop in October 2018, with an associated extra day workshop on Bird Monitoring funded by a Community Skills Development Grant from the Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning.  As a result of this training the group decided to undertake a bird monitoring project in the Black Spur Creek wetlands area. 

The Black Spur Creek wetlands and associated area, is a 40 Ha publicly owned (but managed by multiple stakeholders) area that includes the ex-railway easement – now a rail trail, the wetlands at the confluence of the Tarwin River and Blackspur Creek, some remnant Strzelecki gum forest, a new roadway being built by Major Roads Victoria as part of a South Gippsland Highway realignment and grazing land that is privately leased.

We have been looking at ways we can conduct bird surveys that will help us understand if the considerable changes the area is going to be subject to over the next ten years and beyond has had an impact (hopefully for the better) on the wildlife.  Using birds as signal animals we should be able to assess the impact of the road works and the associated offsets and habitat management programs. An associated benefit of monitoring birds is that there is considerable local interest in bird watching and it is an activity that rail trail users are already undertaking, albeit informally.  There is also a method for record keeping via the Birdlife Australia survey app which will make our observations useful and available for others to access.

As the rail trail is the means of access to the area, it seems sensible to conduct our surveys along a select length of the track.

The group has had many meetings and discussion about where best to monitor. There are three historic railway bridges that have been restored and rebuilt to allow the rail trial to cross the Black Spur Creek, and the Tarwin River (twice) in the project area. The terrain that is observable from this route varies from wetland to riparian forest and open grazing besides the river.  We will undertake regular 2 Ha, 20 minute searches. as per birdlife.org survey techniques. Birdlife Australia has helped us develop the three survey areas. They are

NTVLC-01 Blackspur Creek wetlands, Koonwarra

NTVLC-02 Tarwin River crossing (middle bridge), Koonwarra

NTVLC-03 Tarwin River crossing (Apple Tree wetlands), Koonwarra