Parklands are already seeing impacts of climate change in our regional parks, with successive floods affecting vegetation in the riparian zones of our creeks and rivers. Corridors that were fenced prior to the 2022 floods were not able to be revegetated as the floodwaters that prevented access were immediately followed by dry conditions affecting the survival of those seedlings we were able to plant.

At the same time, the floods spread weed seeds far and wide and provided perfect germination conditions, allowing invasive weeds to get a foothold in our regional parks.

Thanks to a new Landcare funded project, we will be able to work with our community to address some of these impacts in the coming year.

Our Wodonga Regional Park Revegetation and Restoration project will deliver a series of park stewardship mornings across the regional parks. These Ranger led sessions will build community skills in on-ground environmental restoration, offering community volunteers and local students supported opportunities to learn and apply best practice techniques for invasive weed removal and revegetation in our region.

A significant element of the project will be community planting mornings to plant and guard 5,000 native plants into biodiversity corridors in Wodonga. These events will plant local species chosen for survivability and grown using seedstock sourced from hotter, drier regions to our north – making them more likely to survive in the expected future conditions.

This project is supported by the Victorian Government through the Victorian Landcare program.