Speakers

Speaker 1 – S1 Heremaia Titoko (Melbourne Water, Partnerships Coordinator Ramsar, Waterways & Catchment Services)

Speaker 2 – S2 Andrew Morrison (Melbourne Water, Senior Asset Planner, Service Programs)

Speaker 3 – S3 Gavin Brock (Melbourne Water, Waterways & Land Officer)

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S1: We care about Ramsar sites they’re a part of a global agreement to look after sites that are important for migratory birds.

They fly over here from a long way away and they rest here and breed and feed for their big journey home.

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S2: Western Port is one of the best birdwatching sites in all of Australia. Yes, I’m biased, but certainly at any one time you could see 100 species of waterbirds and shorebirds.

S3: The Ramsar site is recognized internationally, through the Ramsar Treaty as an important wetland for migratory birds. We need to manage the environment so that they can get what they need in order to turn around and go back again.

S1: This mangrove extent that we have in Western Port is one of the most southern extents of mangroves in the Southern hemisphere. The whole Western Port Ramsar site is almost 60,000 hectares, and the mangroves take up almost one sixth of that area.

So when the tide goes down and you have salt marsh and mudflats, that can be almost half the area exposed.

The most surprising thing I learnt about mangroves and this site is that the mangroves are only one species.

So the mangroves are an amazing part, in fact, on of the vital parts of the ecosystems of Western Port, because they provide the habitat around the shoreline where them all the migratory birds come and feed and rest.

So when they get here, like we all do when we get home, we want somewhere nice, somewhere that’s inviting somewhere that we can fuel up and rest. And that’s exactly what these sites are for. For the migratory birds.

S2: So the work we do is really critical because part of Western Port include threatened vegetation communities. So there is an obligation that we help protect and conserve these areas and manage and mitigate threats to those communities. But like anything that’s potentially going to be met by barriers to that transition.

So things like roads, pipes and culverts, urban areas, residential areas have got no room to basically retreat.

S1: Unfortunately due to agricultural influences and people moving around the coastline with developments, the mangroves have restricted themselves to smaller and smaller areas.

S3: Spartina is a weedy grass, so it's a bit like Kikuyu or Couch. It impacts on the feeding areas for the migratory shore birds that inhabit Ramsar site that give it its main value.

S2: So we're out here on Western Port, which is on beautiful Bunurong country.

I think we're really fortunate to work at Melbourne Water.

We're super lucky to have three internationally recognised wetlands within our region.

From a global perspective, these sites are so critical.

S1:At Melbourne Water, as part of my role to help manage and coordinate our partners to restore Western Port. We use the latest science and research, we work with communities, we work with councils as well as a lot of land care groups.

S2: Western Port has Ramsar Site Management Plan, which basically sets out the strategic framework. It outlines the values, but it also outlines some of the threats and challenges. So we use that plan to establish programmes to help counter some of those threats and challenges.

So we have really, really accurate mapping of where we think under certain climate scenarios that we're going to see additional inundation or prolonged inundation so we can start to plan for that.

Working with traditional owners has been a really important part of the role of site coordinator for Western Port, through self-determination, really be guided by what's important to Bunurong people and we look to make that fit into what we're trying to achieve here at Western Port.

And we've been really fortunate to have a great relationship with the Bunurong Land Council who we're partnered on a number of Ramsar projects over the last few years.

We've got a really large extent of mature mangroves we're trying to put in the next generation.

We ultimately work with Bass Coast Land Care Network and other organisations.

We’re really about collaboration, trying to come up with ways where there's multiple benefits, but ultimately we're here to make sure that the sites are maintained and protected.

We have multi year partnership agreements with a range of stakeholders including Parks Victoria, Phillip Island Nature Parks, land care groups and other community groups to help restore the site.

S3: So I suppose it would be the hope to continue that that control of Spartan and hopefully we can remove it from from Western Port and be a great achievement to do something like that, but at least to to knock it back to a situation where it's not impacting greatly on the Ramsar site.

S1: We have migratory birds that keep coming here, they keep resting, they keep feeding and that everyone gets to enjoy this beautiful sight.

S2: I just hope that we continue to build a community and a network of people that really value Western Port and want to see it thriving.

As long as there's people interested in the site, then I think we've got something to work with moving forward.

At the end of the day, we're here to coordinate a collective group that have the vision to protect and conserve.