Project Description
AABR National Forum 2024 – The R’s of Restoration
Wait and see – the benefits of time to explore resilience – Brian Bainbridge
Brian has worked in ecological restoration since the mid 1990s. For over twenty years Brian worked with the community-based not for profit organisation – Merri Creek Management Committee and over the past 6 years as the Biodiversity officer with Hepburn Shire, a small, ecologically rich rural Shire in Central Victoria. In this role Brian supports the Shire’s Parks, Engineering, Planning and the wider community in their management of many biodiverse-rich spaces.
In 2018, Hepburn Shire Council staff had the challenge of ‘re-booting’ a couple of half-completed restoration projects. The project delays were unintended, but ultimately fortuitous. Time had allowed the natural resilience of the sites to be demonstrated and allowed the shire to ‘retrofit’ ecological principles into restoration strategies for the sites. A butterfly, the bright-eyed brown (Heteronympha cordace ssp. cordace) is emerging as a local flagship for this approach to restoration.
Wombat Flat/Grove of Gratitude. Before. Photos: supplied by Brian Bainbridge
The Hepburn Shire removed willows (mainly crack and grey sallow) and blackberry from approximately one hectare of marshy creek flats at ‘Wombat Flat’ above Lake Daylesford in 2016. A standard revegetation planting was installed on a quarter of the site but the balance of the cleared area remained untreated. Coarse woody debris was scraped up and mulched in 2018, but no further restoration plan was in place. At nearby Lake Jubilee a similar site was cleared of willow in 2018 but a planned revegetation program was postponed due to difficulties in burning the resulting woody debris.
Wombat Flat/Grove of Gratitude. After. Photos: supplied by Brian Bainbridge
In 2020, both sites were revisited and found to have regenerated abundantly with tens of thousands of individual plants from nearly 40 species of native sedge, rush, grass, herbs, ferns, and trees. Plants had grown from pre-existing remnants, soil-stored seeds as well as water, wind and bird-dispersed seeds. Removal of competition from invasive species, together with disturbance by machinery, fostered natural regeneration mirroring the ‘Facilitated (assisted) regeneration’ approach.
These stalled projects provided a valuable natural experiment to assess local capacity for natural recovery. The natural regeneration following initial intervention at both sites (4 years at Wombat Flat, 2 years at Lake Jubilee) allowed the sites to be reconsidered in terms of the six key principles of ecological restoration practice (Standards Reference Group SERA, 2021), in particular, principle 2 – Restoration inputs will be dictated by level of resilience and degradation. The principle calls for skilful assessment of capacity of natural recovery prior to prescribing regeneration or reintroduction-based approaches.
The works to date have also demonstrated SERA Principle 5, that ‘Restoration science and practice are synergistic’. Restoration plans were re-designed to incorporate the natural regeneration. A mosaic of regeneration capacity was evident across the sites with drier areas in particular showing lower regeneration and in these patches a higher input ‘combined regeneration/reintroduction’ approach was indicated. At Wombat Flat, planned annual commemorative planting for the Chillout Festival (an annual LGBTQI+ festival) was re-directed into these areas of poor regeneration. Similarly, at Lake Jubilee, the resources for revegetation were redirected into follow up woody weed control and revegetation of patches where natural regeneration was not evident. At both sites, some desirable species that had not regenerated became a focus for reintroduction.
Some in our community expressed strong objections to the Daylesford willow removal projects and to ecological restoration more broadly, reflecting divergent knowledge systems, aesthetic, and cultural values. Drastic landscape change, big machinery and chemical application were particularly challenging aspects of these restoration projects. Such opposition vividly illustrated the SERA Principle 6 ‘Social aspects and critical to successful ecological restoration’. Community support for restoration relies on trust in Council’s capacity to achieve lasting benefits within the limitations of a small Shire budget. While the natural regeneration of native plants is a convincing illustration of the potential of wetland restoration, communication has also been aided by the story of a butterfly. Butterflies are great ‘flagships’ because their habits are well studied, they are highly visible and are generally appealing to the wider community.
In summer of 2021, Shire staff discovered bright-eyed brown butterfly (Heteronympha cordace cordace) at the two Daylesford restoration sites and at two similar community-led restoration sites in Trentham. Previous local records of the bright-eyed brown butterfly were sparse and very dated. As a species, this butterfly is not regarded as threatened, however as a weak-flying wetland butterfly that is restricted to cooler regions it is evidently vulnerable to wetland degradation, climate change and habitat fragmentation.
Bright-eyed brown butterfly caterpillars feed only on tall sedge Carex appressa, and adult butterflies require nectar of summer flowering plants such as prickly tea tree, Leptospermum continentale. Tall sedge had regenerated abundantly in the Daylesford and Trentham restoration sites but no tea trees. Introduced creeping buttercup (Ranunculus repens) and birdsfoot trefoil (Lotus uliginosa) were observed to be the main nectar sources for adult butterflies. Observations of un-restored sites suggest the butterflies had survived locally in low numbers around the edges of wetlands, where tall sedge and flowering weeds persisted outside the dense shade of willow and blackberry infestations.
Bright-eyed brown butterflies evidently respond well to wetland restoration locally and supply a ‘focal’ species for informing further ecological intervention. The butterfly’s reliance on introduced weeds for nectar has demonstrated the need for staged weed control and a target for reintroducing native flowering shrubs. In 2023 the butterfly was observed in a local high-quality remnant near Trentham, indicating the site’s suitability as reference ecosystem and creating the opportunity to further refine works according to SERA principle 1, ‘Ecological restoration is based on an appropriate local native reference ecosystem’.
Local groups have related that the butterfly story has given them hope and energy for their work. The butterfly also is a beautiful flagship for the approach of giving nature the time to demonstrate capacity for self-recovery. These site’s dramatic and cost-effective natural regeneration give council greater confidence to design ‘wait and see’ periods to monitor, assess and incorporate natural regeneration into restoration projects.
Standards Reference Group SERA. (2021). National Standards for the Practice of Ecological Restoration in Australia. Edition 2.2. Society for Ecological Restoration Australasia.