Reflections on restoration at the Growling Frog Golf Course

Project Description

Grassland Resurrection – Connecting Knowledge, Research & Management Forum

 8 May, 2026. Fitzroy Town Hall, Melbourne, Victoria

Tim Connell & Alex Hodgson – City of Whittlesea

Tim Connell has been driving environmental planning and public land management in one of Melbourne’s fastest growing municipalities for over two decades. Tim leads a team who manage important reserves on Melbourne’s northern fringe and regularly engage in vertebrate fauna survey. This monitoring has driven management decisions, also leaving a legacy for Grassy Eucalypt Woodland.

Alex Hodgson has a background in Environmental and Forest Ecosystem Science. Over the last twelve years Alex’s has strongly focused on contract development and biodiversity enhancement projects including threatened species habitat restoration of waterways and woodlands. Tim and Alex share insights into two decades of survey and restoration at the Growling Frog Golf Course.

Reflections on restoration at the Growling Frog Golf Course: We’ve come a ‘fairway’

The Growling Frog Golf Course was established in the early 2000s managed by the City of Whittlesea’s Conservation Team. We have planted, weeded and direct seeded a mosaic of landscapes across a 52 ha conservation area. Management of biomass and importing rock and woody debris has diversified habitat for reptiles and amphibians, while the landscape scale restoration has also focused on connectivity and dispersal for arboreal mammals like Krefts Gliders. Restoration efforts through 2024-2026 focus on enrichment and diversity now that much of the architecture has been established, assisted by fencing strengthened via a Trust for Nature Covenant. This case study speaks to how our regular surveys and works performance monitoring have been used to measure success, and the efforts/inputs needed for reestablishing functional GEW: it is a small step with a fairway to go!

Questions from the Forum

1. Kangaroos are a constant problem, and the issue is bigger than just one council. Any chance we can get a city-wide management plan? Do you work with other Councils on this?
   1. This is a very complex and sensitive issue. Ultimately Kangaroos are a state government responsibility under DEECA but Council does advocate on this issue. Council also requires that all new developments upon request, must prepare a Kangaroo Management Plan.

2. Is illegal firewood collection getting increasing or decreasing with urbanisation?
   1. Hard to say definitively however this remains an ongoing issue and Council’s Conservation team will always try to avoid leaving smaller logs around that are more tempting for firewood use.

3. How do you deal with rabbit burrowing disturbance by the fences? Since they use the fence as predator protection to burrow.
   1. There has thankfully not been much rabbit digging in or outside of our exclusion fencing to date, but we’ll need to ensure these fences are regularly inspected and any damage repaired asap.

4. What other stock may be appropriate? Alpaca? Llamas? Goats? Kangaroos? Guinea Pigs???
   1. There are no plans to consider any other stock at the Growling Frog Golf Course, we are already working hard to exclude large numbers of Kangaroos, rabbits and stray golfers. Biomass management is very important however and we also do a lot of slashing and ecological burning at this site especially in the plots that exclude grazing (a necessary trade off to enable revegetation establishment).

5. How long did I take to put the fence up? Did you put it all up at once, and how much did it cost?
   1. Council were able to secure internal support for this project under the banner of Grassy Eucalypt Woodland which helped cover the ~$80k cost of the Kangaroo exclusion fence and also ensure it was able to be erected quickly (just over a month).

6. What can we do as an industry to address the view that managing invasive ground flora, particularly grasses, is too resource-intensive and a waste of time due to tightening local and state government budgets?
   1. I guess we all have a role to play in advocacy and in selling the value of grasslands whenever and however we can.

7. What would you consider the most important management decision you’ve made in restoring the Growling Frog Golf Course?
   1. The decision to start monitoring the changes early, especially with respect to fauna has provided great supporting data to reinforce the importance of management decisions. There is now over 20 years of fauna data which tells a great story of progress.

8. How do you mitigate/manage the threat of urban sprawl ?
   1. The Urban Growth Boundary has been reached south of the golf course (~1.5km) which means urban sprawl will not impact the “frog”.

9. Will the frog golf course get surrounded by Urban hell, creating a wildlife island? See above

10. Offsets, are generally crap and underwhelming…. How do you mitigate the shitness of offsets ?
    1. It is what it is and better to have offsets than nothing at all. All we can do is manage what we have as best we can and remain positive.