News from the Blue Wren Subcommittee, March 2025

By Andrew Wood, Blue Wren Subcommittee Convenor, Bulletin 1/2025, March

Glebe’s Hill research project: the results are in

The Glebe Society was pleased to receive the generous grant from the City of Sydney and to now share the outcomes of the project with Council through the comprehensive final report titled ‘Glebe’s Hill: unravelling its biodiversity secrets and potential, by Dieter Hochuli, Manuel Lequerica Tamara and Genevieve Heggarty from the University of Sydney’s School of Life and Environmental Sciences.

The University has provided the Society with a copy of the report, now available on our website; copies have been sent to the Lord Mayor and Councillors. The report is also available online from the University of Sydney.

The Society, through its Blue Wren Subcommittee, now hopes to work with Council in 2025 to take forward the project’s recommendations and explore the opportunities to develop the 0.6 Ha of Crown Land known as Glebe’s Hill as a biodiversity resource for the City.

Recommendations of the report

Here are the report’s recommendations:

• Habitat enhancement: Planting native weed-resistant woody meadows dominated by staggered flowering periods to support pollinators and small birds and creating a fenced area to limit disturbance to wildlife. Gradual removal of invasive plants like Chinese Hackberry and Lantana, replaced with native species.
• Community engagement: Involving local residents and schools in the project to foster a sense of ownership and support.
• Monitoring and evaluation: Regular monitoring to assess the effectiveness of interventions and adapt strategies as needed.
• City-wide initiatives: Collaborate with adjacent LGAs to create a Sydney-wide plan to ensure a range of species can access Glebe’s Hill and assist with restoring its biodiversity.

Next steps for Glebe’s Hill

The Glebe Society recommends that the City consider funding the following priority actions for Glebe’s Hill in its 2025–2026 budget:

• Secure the site: The perimeter fences to Glebe’s Hill should be secured to prevent its future use by rough sleepers, exploring school children and others.
• Remove toxic and contaminated surface rubbish, but leave in place structural habitat elements (e.g. rocks, old logs and metal sheeting to provide continuing habitat for lizards (page 24 of the University’s Report).
• Review all the recommendations of the University’s report and develop a plan to progress core issues, including ensuring existing biodiversity elements are maintained, community engagement and monitoring are facilitated and site constraints are investigated. The latter could involve predeveloping a soil contamination and remediation report consistent with the site’s proposed future use as a wildlife refuge with controlled access to the public.

Grant finances

The grant funds awarded by the City were deposited into the Society’s bank account, and we have now made a final payment of $10,000 to the University of Sydney for their research work. It was, however, initially impossible to upload the nine-page acquittal report to the City’s Smartygrants website. The upload has now been completed, and we await its review in March by our Grant Liaison Officer to receive the City’s final payment of $4,000.

9th Annual Biodiversity Lecture

A list of possible lecturers has been prepared and a final decision about whom to invite will be made at the next meeting of the Subcommittee. The lecture is planned for May 2025.

Bushcare volunteers

Orphan School Creek Bushcare Group

The group held a working bee, attended by eight volunteers, on Sunday 2 February; another is scheduled for 2 March. Judy Christie, leader of the group, will speak during a Zoom meeting organised by the City for its volunteers.

Glebe Palmerston and Surrounds Landcare Group

We’ve had two working bees this year. The plants are thriving. Some trees and shrubs lost branches which broke during the recent big storms. We’re keeping the Celtis and other weeds under control, making space around some Banksias in lower Palmerston and picking up lots of litter as needed. Some of the litter appears to have been dumped on our plants from building projects or house clean-outs. The rest is mainly paper, soft and hard plastics. Council recently water-blasted the growth on the gutters at the edges of our site. It’s made moving up, down and across the gutters way easier and safer. We’re in the process of providing Council with the details of our volunteers who are 65+ years old for insurance purposes.

Ros Vaughan and Anna Szanto met with Jen Beer (the City’s community greening gardens and volunteering coordinator) at an onsite meeting last month and had a productive time. We discussed getting a hose, getting seedlings for planting in autumn, the removal of offensive graffiti from upper Palmerston and elsewhere, tree branch trimming, getting a sign that we’d change regularly with a ‘bird of the month’ or ‘plant of the month’ and information about our group and when we meet, coming up with a new name for our site that has Aboriginal significance, and the possibility of removing mature Celtis trees on Light Rail land to be replaced by mature native trees.

Harold Park–Johnstons Creek Bushcare Group

The Casuarinas on the Creek (photo below) have still not been removed by the City, and Nick Sangster will be sending them annotated photos of 38 trees (less than 4 metres in height) that require removal.