Turning our magnifying glass on grassland species

Recently volunteers working with the Victorian National Parks Association's NatureWatch program have been searching for Growling Grass Frogs, Striped Legless Lizards and Plains Yam Daisies.

They have also been learning how to monitor for Golden Sun Moths. Program coordinator Caitlin Griffith reports.

Given grasslands are critically endangered in Victoria, and all of these grassland species are threatened, the work of volunteers in helping us gather data on their populations is crucial to understanding how we can best protect them into the future.

Attendees at a recent grassland management conference held at Wyndham stressed the importance of not only involving the community in grasslands, but also of monitoring in grasslands.

Ada Nano, who has been coordinating our NatureWatch program while I was on leave, helped me show how we are achieving these things.

Out at Kalkallo Grassland, north of Melbourne, we met up with Brian Bainbridge from Merri Creek Management Committee and Friends of Merri Creek. Brian showed us how to identify the Plains Yam Daisy and sent us out to search methodically for them.

As you can imagine, we were very excited to locate several unknown populations and plants of this indigenous Daisy (also known as Murnong).

This will be of great benefit in understanding how this species responds to fire.

 

Volunteers search for Growling Grass Frog tadpoles.

Monitoring Striped Legless Lizards.

 

A small group of volunteers joined us on a warm day for training in counting the Golden Sun Moth, a critically endangered day-flying moth.

The volunteers were also trained in conducting grass density assessments, which help us understand the habitat preferences of this moth.

These volunteers are now ready to join us on Golden Sun Moth counts at Derrimut Grassland reserve, which we will carry out as the weather warms up.

We also had a great group of volunteers joining us to monitor Growling Grass Frogs at an old quarry site, now a known breeding site for this species.

Led by Daniel Gilmore, a zoologist from Biosis Research, we scrambled our way into the site, listened for the frog's distinctive growl, dressed up in waders and searched for tadpoles, and took records.

City of Whittlesea staff were very pleased to receive reports on the results of our monitoring here in 2010, and we look forward to two more volunteer days of monitoring the local population
of this beautiful frog.

Volunteering information

Growling Grass Frog monitoring is planned for Saturday 21 January, 6.30-9.30pm. For details phone 9347 5188 or email caitling@vnpa.org.au.

 

This story first appeared in the December 2011 edition of the Victorian National Parks Association's quarterly magazine Park Watch. You can buy Park Watch from our office, or receive it for free as part of a VNPA membership package. To find out more about our NatureWatch programs and how you can get involved visit naturewatch.vnpa.org.au.