People have the power

00:07 Eliza Herbert: Do you remember that feeling of being on a school camp with the promise of a whole day ahead of you when there's an extraordinary world waiting for you just outside? There's sun warming the rolling hills and sparkling off the river. There are birds ruffling their feathers, calling out to each other that the day is starting. It's time to get a wriggle on. This is kind of what it feels like at breakfast time for a group of volunteers who have come to Scottsdale reserve just 45 minutes south of Canberra on Ngunnawal Ngarigo Country in New South Wales.

This dedicated group will spend the next two days on a patch of degraded land, digging holes, hammering stakes, preparing tree guards, and planting seedlings, all in an effort to revegetate the landscape and create a native woodland. This is Big Sky Country, a podcast by Bush Heritage Australia. I'm your host, Eliza Herbert. And today we are going tree planting at Scottsdale, where a group of volunteers is out to make a difference.

01:24 Volunteer: I'm a strong believer that individuals can make a difference, and I think it's just incredibly important to be giving back.

01:31 Volunteer: You know, it really nurtures the soul. I think this, this type of volunteer work and yeah.

01:36 Volunteer: And yeah, tree planting is where it's at for me. Yep, we need more trees.

01:50 Eliza Herbert: Affectionately known as the “People's Reserve”, Scottsdale is a testament to people power. It is a 1,307 hectare nature reserve that is seen over 40,000 trees planted by volunteers and Bush Heritage staff who clock up thousands of hours out in the field every year.

02:08 Phil Palmer: I remember seven years ago when I came for my job interview with Bush Heritage and I got shown around the reserve, they said “So what do you think?”.  And my answer today is the same. You know, there's so much of it is better than I ever imagined. And then parts of it are worse than I ever imagined. And so, there are some super challenges ahead with erosion and weeds and you know, soil loss and, species isolation and climate change, but then there's just so much hope.

02:39 Eliza Herbert: At its helm is Reserve Manager Phil Palmer, who has worked on and with this landscape for seven years.

02:45 Phil Palmer: Yeah, it's completely, you know, captured my every being, every bit of energy gets poured into this place. I just love it to death. And it all comes together during these planning, weekends.

03:01 Eliza Herbert: Bush Heritage purchased Scottsdale in 2006, and from the very beginning it was clear that a mammoth effort would be needed to restore parts of the landscape. Around 300 hectares had been extensively cleared, while other pockets of the site suffered from erosion and years of drought, but equally abundant in the landscape were precious ecological gems.

03:21 Phil Palmer: Oh, you get into the hills up here and you just find these really beautiful patches of bush that's you know it's survived 200 years of agriculture, but still very much intact. And it has the built-in resilience to be able to, given the time and the protection that it needs. It's on a really good trajectory of recovery. And so, there's very little we need to do in those places.

03:54 Eliza Herbert: The flora that Scottsdale protects includes the endangered Grassy Box Woodlands and temperate grasslands, which are as rich in biodiversity as rainforest. There are also Silver-Leafed Mountain gums, which are a remnant of Australia's last Ice Age and of which only 10 populations are thought to survive.

04:11 Phil Palmer: These sites are very culturally rich. This cultural material all through this property that represents or illustrates that this was a really high, productive, fertile, valuable estate for the Ngunnawal Ngarigo people of the area and the those groups that passed through on their way up to the high country and it's just written all over the landscape and to try and rebuild, you know, through the revegetation, rebuild the ecological function integrity and maintain the cultural values and importance to this places starts with putting a tree in the ground. 

And I'll look after the first aid and the logins for everyone. And the cars are all lined up. We'll be all lined up on the driveway, ready, ready to go.

05:02 Eliza Herbert: If you've never attended a tree planting day before, here's the low down. You slip, slop, slap, grab a bucket, a hammer, trowel, some fertilizer pellets and you're ready to go.

05:15 Phil Palmer: It's so exciting to have a day where we are not threatened out by rain. Yes, stunner day. Make sure you keep your hats on. We will burn with our winter pasty skin.

05:24 Eliza Herbert: All around you is row upon row of pre-dug holes lining up and waiting in the soil.

05:30 Phil Palmer: So, if you're laying out the guards, lay them out really nicely for the next person, it's all about getting it ready for the next person in the line, and then the guard facing down and two hardwood stakes both pointing down. It's really nice to have that laid out nicely for you. So, when you're planting and I love getting in a rhythm pumping them out …

05:48 Eliza Herbert: Phil is describing the process to the group. The idea is that you work in unison and each person takes on a different role. Some will thread stakes into the corners of pale blue tree guards. Others will move along the rows laying out seedlings. And because teamwork makes the dream work, pretty soon everyone will fall into a rhythm, and the sprightliest of the group will begin planting.

06:10 Phil Palmer: Spend a bit of time with your side prep. It's really important. It's the most important. This plant has got to sit there for the next 500 years.

06:17 Eliza Herbert: They grabbed their buckets and tap out their plant using Phil's special advice.

06:22 Phil Palmer: So when we take our plants out of the pot, it's really tempting to squeeze and to push, but you don't need to. Because it's this magic trick which just makes the plant rise up out of its pot (taps bottom of pot). You know, it was quite loose.

06:39 Eliza Herbert: Then they measure the hole, pop in the fertilizer tab and the seedling and tenderly fill in the soil. Then the hammering really begins. A cacophony of tree guards being secured into the ground.

06:52 Phil Palmer: I love it when the hammering it in of the stakes gets so intense. It just sounds like rain. It's just there are hundreds of people just powering in those guards. It's a yeah, it's a beautiful thing.

07:05 Eliza Herbert: Tree planting is a crucial part of the culture at Scottsdale and for Phil,  these volunteer planting weekends are the highlight of his year. This year alone, over 600 people have come through the reserve to help out.

07:16 Phil Palmer: Planting to me is really the absolute number one thing to be doing. We work towards this all year and say, yeah, just super excited to see such big groups here. After you know the challenges of the past couple of years.

07:30 Eliza Herbert: The “we” he's referring to is the team at Scottsdale and notably, Kim Jarvis, who you'll often find with her green thumb growing seedlings.

07:39 Kim Jarvis: Hi, my name is Kim Jarvis. I'm a field officer on Scottsdale Reserve in Bredbo. Welcome to my nursery. This is where we make all of our babies.

07:49 Eliza Herbert: If each seedling is a baby, then think of Kim as Mother Nature. She grows the majority of the seedlings for these planting weekends in the beloved Scottsdale Nursery, which was built by volunteers.

08:01 Kim Jarvis: Come in. So, this is where our babies are held.

08:08 Eliza Herbert: There are around eight and half thousand seedlings currently in the nursery and as we enter, I'm struck by the colours. Silvery grey, rusty pink and vibrant green. Kim takes me through row upon row of baby trees, still dewy from their morning watering and some about the height of a thumbtack.

08:25 Kim Jarvis: There are seven species of Acacia here. We've got Popbush. The Prickly Bursaria that birds love so much. That's my favourite. We have a lot of riparian plants to plant, so we've got Hakia, Tea tree, Melaleuca, Kunzeas, and a bunch of grasses and sedges in here. Oh, and this bench here, this is a very special bench. It’s Cypress Pines, She-oaks and Hakia.

08:51 Eliza Herbert: Almost all of the seed is collected from Scottsdale or nearby seed sources, but Kim and Phil are also thinking ahead and sourcing seed from different climatic conditions, which means they collect seed from areas further out west where conditions are currently in line with the climate forecast predicted at Scottsdale for the next hundred or so years.

09:10 Kim Jarvis: As you can see, there's far too much work for one person in this nursery.

09:15 Eliza Herbert: It's a huge job, but thankfully Kim is not alone.

09:19 Kim Jarvis: Annie is one of our volunteers. She comes two days every week to work in the nursery. She has the greenest fingers I know. Her transplanting success rate is just about a hundred percent. I think I know her trick, though I often catch her talking to the plants, I pretty sure they respond to that well.

09:37 Eliza Herbert: Not only will these seedlings hopefully grow to be tall trees providing habitat for endangered bird and mammal species, they are part of an interconnected ecosystem, restoring the land and surrounding river systems. What happens in Kim's nursery affects what happens on the land and what happens on the land affects what happens in the river. So, let's take this story down to the river, the great Murrumbidgee, Australia's second-longest river.

10:05 Antia Bradermann: My name is Antia Bradermann. I'm the Upper Murrumbidgee Demonstration Reach Facilitator.

10:10 Eliza Herbert: The Upper Murrumbidgee Demonstration Reach or UMDR, as it's known for short, is a regional partnership within the Upper Murrumbidgee catchment to look at how local landholders, organizations and services can work together to improve the health of the river.

10:24 Antia Bradermann: A big focus for us is native fish. We have two nationally significant populations of fish. Macquarie Perch and the Murray Cod, both of which are iconic species. But improving river health, is also about improving benefits of the river for the community and every other aquatic species that lives in the river.

10:47 Eliza Herbert: Antia has joined this weekend's tree planting session as a volunteer, but when she has her facilitator hat on at Scottsdale, she's there for all sorts of reasons, one of which is the Adventurous Volunteers program, through which specially trained Bush Heritage volunteers take to the water in rafts to undertake weed mapping and control revegetation and soil stabilization.

11:08 Antia Bradermann: Well, rivers are connected systems, so a river is the sum of its catchments. So, everything that happens in the catchment and everybody that lives in the catchment and works in the catchment has an influence on our river systems. Rivers are the life bloods of our landscape and they're really essential to sustain life itself.

11:27 Eliza Herbert: The trees planted at Scottsdale will provide shade on the catchment and reduce water temperature in the river.

11:33 Antia Bradermann: And that's a really important ecological feature to have a cool shaded river. The trees will help the water infiltrate into the landscape and the healthy soils will keep moisture and so the catchment will be able to retain moisture better and be recharged. So that will actually help the flows in the system and replacing the native vegetation in the catchment even quite far up the slope, as I said, provides that organic matter input that upland streams require to drive the food webs and the ecology. So exactly the trees that we're planting today, it's all connected and well, small actions can impact our river health. There's been a lot of studies done that even a small amount of planting can actually have this amazing benefit to our rivers. So, I think there's a lot of benefit being created here today.

12:23 Eliza Herbert: While small actions like planting a tree have a long list of benefits to the ecosystem, the team at Scottsdale know the work is never over.

12:31 Phil Palmer: I think it's just not enough to preserve the little bits of gold of natural resources that we have left in this country and in the world.

12:41 Eliza Herbert: In Australia, about 90% of native vegetation in the eastern, temperate and southwestern temperate zones has been removed for agriculture, industry, transport and human habitat. About 50% of Australia's rainforests have been cleared, and the proportion of the country covered by forest or woodland has been reduced by more than a third. According to a report by the World Wildlife Fund, extreme rates of land clearing placed Australia as one of the top ten countries for land clearing in the world in 2017 and globally, some 177,000 square kilometres of natural vegetation and forests continues to be lost each year.

13:19 Phil Palmer: What's needed, you know, if we're going to have  a future that includes woodlands and forests and even parks and gardens and, you know, have good functioning ecosystems. We can enjoy wildlife. We just need to be putting back quicker than we're taking.

13:38 Eliza Herbert: As our climate continues to change, conserving our natural resources is becoming more important than ever. With extreme conditions set to become more frequent the efforts of Scottsdale's dedicated volunteers took a hit in 2020, when the Orroral-Namadgi and Clear Range fires swept over the Murrumbidgee River and burned around 73% of the reserve, including important habitat trees, culturally significant trees and thousands of the precious seedlings that had been planted by volunteers.

14:09 Phil Palmer: Yeah, the fire was better and worse and in many ways you know it was really hard to see and for those that were here, it was incredibly confronting and terrifying. And for those that have poured their heart and soul into this place, there was a huge sense of loss.

14:27 Eliza Herbert: After the bushfires, the community came together to mourn, take stock, rebuild and support the land to regenerate.

14:35 Phil Palmer: And the support we got, you know, was life changing, It was really at that point we knew we were a part of a bigger community. That was super, you know, assuring and yeah, really nice. Really nice reminder that Bush Heritage just isn't just a reserve with fences and that we operate and work across the landscape and we work within the communities. And yeah, the community certainly rallied for us after that.

15:08 Eliza Herbert: Looking forward, the vision is that over time, Phil and the team will be able to create a resilient Grassy Box woodland with natural regeneration, a healthy woodland canopy cover, a good overstory and ground cover of grasses, forbs and herbs. But what really strikes me, as I talk to Phil, is his ability to see the silver lining. There is a sense that he knows that he and Scottsdale are part of something bigger. They are the people's reserve, after all, and people will always show up when needed.

15:37 Phil Palmer: Well, I mean absolutely, conservation is a people issue. You know, like we've caused the problem, we’re the solution to the problem and working with people is the only way forward.

15:49 Volunteer: There's no doubt that it, you know, it really nurtures the soul, I think, this type of volunteer work.

15:56 Volunteer: I came today because I love Scottsdale and it just, you know make me grounded and I feel good about myself when you volunteer, you know, in this beautiful environment.

16:14 Volunteer: I mean I get more out of it than Scottsdale does when I'm here, you know. It's this sense of peace at the end of the day and the orange light just before sunset and it's beautiful.

16:25 Volunteer: We know that the country's deteriorated a lot since it's been cleared, so yes, we need to plant trees, to restore the country to some extent.

16:38 Volunteer: I feel coming out here, planting a tree that you know is going to be here a long time. Unless it has a rough time, it's going be here for a long, long time, creating habitat and sucking in carbon dioxide and pumping out oxygen. And yeah, tree planting is where it's at for me. Yep, we need more trees.

16:56 Eliza Herbert: While 40,000 trees might seem small in a global context, the difference it makes to this community and country is immeasurable.

17:08 Background singing: We are the Champions …

17:39 Eliza Herbert: Big Sky Country is a podcast by Bush Heritage Australia, a leading not-for-profit conservation organization, protecting ecosystems and wildlife across the continent. We acknowledge the Traditional Owners of the land in which this episode was produced and recorded and recognize and respect their enduring relationship with their lands and waters. We pay our respects to elders, past and present, and any traditional owners listening today.

To learn more about how you can support our work, visit the link in the show notes and make sure to subscribe to this podcast. Follow us on social media or sign up to our newsletter to get all of the latest news. A huge thank you to all of the volunteers who participated in this weekend's planting. Dennis, Tess, Toby, Russell, Wendy, Justin, Yiching, Abby, Simon. Paul, Ute, Cara, Freda, Sarah, Julie and Miles planted nearly 2,000 trees over the course of this weekend alone. And many of them are regular Scottsdale volunteers. Both Scottsdale and the Upper Murrumbidgee Demonstration Reach have seen significant financial support from government agencies and generous donors, including the Volkswagen Australia Group, who stepped in after the Black Summer bushfires, and the Murray Darling Basin Authority, who support the Adventurous Volunteers program on the Murrumbidgee River. We are continuously humbled by the generosity of our supporters. Thanks to Phil Palmer, Kim Jarvis and Antia Bradermann for your continued work keeping healthy country protected forever. This episode was produced by Coco McGrath and myself, Eliza Herbert. Theme music is “Invertebrate City” by the Orbweavers and audio is mixed and mastered by Mitch Ansell. 

19:19 Volunteer: Gee, you believe it. It’s finished!