Project Description
Grassland Resurrection – Connecting Knowledge, Research & Management Forum
8 May, 2026. Fitzroy Town Hall, Melbourne, Victoria
Taylor Gundry
While Taylor was undertaking his PhD on plastic pollution, he attended the Conservation and Habitat Management course then ran by Greening Australia, now by the Darebin Creek Management Committee, which he highly recommends. While doing his course Taylor decided a career in land management is what he wanted to pursue. Taking time off from his studies over the summers Taylor has worked as a project firefighter and on multiple bush crews. Arming himself with a chainsaw and knapsack he even had a short stint sole contracting in environment services taking on blackberries and hawthorn bushes. Taylor has now worked his way up to the position of Conservation Manager for the housing developer Resimax and oversees the restoration and management of 1,000 Ha of their biodiversity offsets.
Victorian Native Vegetation Offsets: A tale from direct experience
Biomass management (fire, mowing, grazing): How we are managing two grasslands in Toolern Vale and Little River, conducting burns, pulse grazing, direct seeding/seed harvesting, boom spraying, and spot spraying.
Questions from the Forum
- Kangaroos are a constant problem, and the issue is bigger than just one land owner. How do we solve that?
We coordinate with our neighbours on kangaroo harvests. I.e I have mediated contact between our professional harvester and with our neighbours to arrange access to their land too.
From my experience speaking with harvesters ,there are many bottle necks in the kangaroo meat industry. From reducing or putting a freeze on harvesting in particular districts to the processors changing frequently how many kangaroos they will accept on a given night, these things make it difficult for the harvesters to have a reliable income and feed their families.
I guess we need Tony Armstrong to make another ABC TV series called Eat the Natives, and boost local demand for an organic, free range, high quality protein product.
- Is there a scenario where calodnifop boom or blanket spray applications would increase native plant % coverage?
Although we didn’t do % coverage surveys before we began the burn/Clodinafop trial at the Eynesbury grassland, anecdotally the spear grasses did increase in coverage.
- Taylor Gundry – did any of the clonidnafop trials applied confirm how off target spray at lowered rates (which are?) could adversely impact common native grassland tussock species like Themeda tri, Austrostipa spp. & Rytido spp.?
Other people with very similar grasslands to ours out at Parwan have had good success using Clodinafop at the lower rate of 70ml/Ha to target wild oats. I think they had one species of spear grass not set seed that season. Also speaking to a person at the conference, they sprayed Clodinfop on Themeda and it didnt set seed that season either, I forget what time of year they sprayed. My untested hypothesis would be spraying themeda in winter/early spring when it is dormant should be ‘fine’. My opinion also is that even lossing set seed for one season is a fair trade off to clean up a site of annual weedy grasses that clog up the inter tussock space.
- What happens when the offset money runs out after 10 years? How will the sites get managed then?
My presentation wasn’t about all offsets or the offset system in general but how we specifically are managing our sites.
However:
The Covenant remains on the site, so in that way it is protected. As to the on going financial cost of maintenance, there are people in the who manage offsets pushing for a change to how the Trust works, my understanding, essentially allow for from interest generated to be paid out after the 10 years, so the money would be a lot less than the first 10 years.
Personally I hope for an environmental NGO like Odanata to buy our sites. One of the reasons why I am so keen on translocations is to get rarer species on site to increase the value-proposition, besides it just being a cool side quest for me.
One of the reasons I advocate for grazing for grassland management is that it is the only management option that helps pay for itself. Burning and slashing cost money with no financial return.
Us managers should think defensive resortation. Eg. on one of our sites in Parwan we have planted a ~1.2km long hedge of local shrubs to help capture serrated tussock seed that blows in from the neighbours. So by Year 10 the hedge will be established, and the encroachment pressure of serratred tussock will be a lot less.
- Hi Taylor. Just wondering whether you can speak about how your grass-specific herbicide differs fromgfusilade?
A good question for me to have time to check my chem costings/rates spreadsheet. I’ve calculated Clodinafop to cost $6.4/Ha to boom annual ryegrass, and Fusilade to cost $62.4/Ha. So 10x the cost difference. Both chemicals are ‘fops’ in Group 1.
- Offsets, are generally crap and underwhelming…. How do you mitigate the shitness of offsets ?
My presentation wasn’t about all offsets or the offset system in general but how we specifically are managing our sites.
Help the people managing them.
The analogy I like to use is that offsets are like PPE in the Hierarchy of Controls for working safely, they should be the last line of defence, not the first. I guess politically to push for projects to look to avoid the destruction (Eliminate), have better monitoring of the impact site, potentially doing an offset before a project (Administrative), before going to offsets after the impact has occurred (PPE).
