Project Description
Grassland Resurrection – Connecting Knowledge, Research & Management Forum
8 May, 2026. Fitzroy Town Hall, Melbourne, Victoria
Gidja Walker AOM
Gidja Lee Walker is an ecological consultant and natural systems teacher based on Victoria’s Southern Mornington Peninsula. Her specialties include restoration ecology, threatened species management, endangered ecosystems including Moonah Woodland and wetlands, coastal and saltmarsh ecology and fire ecology. She’s received a Banksia Award for her long-term work on various threatened terrestrial orchids and a Parks Victoria Kookaburra Award for volunteer environmental work. She’s a founder and current long-time president of the Southern Peninsula Indigenous Flora and Fauna Association.
Lessons I have learnt from calcereous swale ‘grasslands’
Questions from the Forum
Do you have any experience controlling pyp grass in coastal dunes?
So Pyp grass, that’s a question from Kim Adair. I had a conversation with him about it. I hadn’t heard about it before but it seems to be a big problem in coastal areas south west of the state. With rhizomic grasses such as this species I usually use a weak 1:700 (rather than standard 1:100) glyphosate but it would need to be trialled in a patch first
Where is your most favourite grassland to have the pleasure of working with? Either here locally in Victoria, or internationally?
My favourite grasslands are on the Monaro on ngarigo country at Mt Oak
Why aren’t kangaroos used more for grazing biomass rather than sheep?
At Mt Oak kangaroos, wombats etc graze the grasslands and the wallaroo and wallabies browse the shrubland and keep it open. However many areas of grassland have become so fragmented they’ve lost their fauna…..and kangaroos aren’t something you can put on a truck and transport round the sites I guess. Interestingly some people have thought that the roos at Mt Oak are “overgrazing” but it doesn’t seem to be impacting on the biodiversity and there is very little bare ground due to mosses lichens and forms. Stock were removed over 40 years ago
Mt Oak – Mt Oak website https://share.google/v4PlIdpIG6Albq9qZ
Offsets, are generally crap and underwhelming…. How do you mitigate the shitness of offsets ?
Offsets don’t work for a number of reasons. I have worked on a couple of them. And I know in the past it was open slather and there was no recompense….and we are expected to be “grateful”. The early incarnation of the offset system was based on net gain (rather than no net loss) whereby the offsets had to be like-for-like and in the same region, were better but have all been watered down. Technically there should be no more grassland clearing as there are no potential offset sites….it’s a big nightmare and I could rant for hours about it.
To avoid getting depressed and immobilised by it (and the state of the world generally) I have the following techniques
- find beauty in everyday
- surround yourself with people who care
- dance wildly
- swear and yell as I pull out weeds
- pranayama =conscious breath work
- look out for my friends
- sit with nature in a place that is recovering and help it along
- advocate/agitate for change
