THE "ACTIVATE TREE PLANTING" PROJECT AND "MANAGEMENT OF THE LOWER VASSE RIVER" - Thursday August 11

This Thursday August 11 sees the next meeting of the Busselton Naturalists Club hosting two speakers presenting on two different but related topics.

Chelsea McDonald will speak about the Activate Tree Planting organisation which this year planted 100,000 seedlings on a private property in the wheatbelt recently.

About 200 volunteers took a weekend to plant a wide variety of native plants  and Chelsea will tell us about the group Activate Tree Planting and what it is doing to repair environmental damage in the wheatbelt.

The main presenter will be Mathilde Breton, the City of Busselton’s Senior Sustainability/Environment Officer who will describe the City’s management actions for the Lower Vasse River.

Once used by the public for recreation, the Lower Vasse River has seen serious algal blooms over summer for at least the last 30 years but new levels of community concern about the environment has seen the City undertake expensive remediation work over recent years including a number of trials.

The problems of the Lower Vasse River mainly relate to elevated levels of nutrients being washed downstream from the catchment and historical pollution from septic tanks. If trees had been planted more widely by a group similar to Activate Tree Planting in the decades prior to today, nutrient levels in the river would have been lower, potentially preventing summer algal blooms.

The meeting on Thursday August 11 is open to the public and venue is the Busselton Senior Citizens Centre on Peel Terrace.

The meeting gets underway at 7.30pm and is free of charge.