2020 has been a challenging year for the Institute, dealing with catastrophic fires and their devastating effects on flora, fauna and entire ecosystems while also navigating the complexities of the Covid-19 pandemic.
We very sadly lost one of our beloved citizen scientists, Richard Lowson, who passed away in December 2020.
Richard was a keystone and a highly-valued member of our ecological monitoring team who will be greatly missed.
We would like to take this opportunity to thank Richard for everything he contributed to BMWHI and to express our sincere condolences to his family and friends.
Vale Richard.
It’s also been a challenging year for the Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area. The official IUCN ‘environmental outlook’ for the Blue Mountains was downgraded after the bushfires, with issues such as the Warragamba Dam wall-raising plan adding to the future threats. The region is now rated as being of ‘significant concern’, down from ‘good with some concerns’ in the IUCN's two previous reports in 2014 and 2017.
However, throughout these challenges, our volunteers, board members, associates, donors and partners have continued to come through for us, and it is because of their ongoing involvement and support that we have been able to keep going with our field work, education, research, and engagement programs throughout 2020.
Dedicated citizen scientists conducting field work at our Lincoln’s Rock, Wentworth Falls monitoring site.
Special thanks must go to the Peter and Luise Hager Foundation whose generous donation enabled us to significantly upgrade and expand our Ecological Monitoring program, in tandem with complementary grants from the NSW Foundation for National Parks, Coca Cola Amatil Foundation and Federal Government Communities Environment Program. And thanks to the Australian Heritage Grants scheme we were able to add a specialised Upland Swamps project to our wider Ecological Monitoring program.
We thank Scenic World for their continued support and unwavering commitment to exploring and communicating the European cultural heritage of the Blue Mountains. Their ongoing financial support enabled us to work with Macquarie University researchers to secure an Australian Research Council grant to survey the Ruined Castle and Nellie’s Glen mining village sites and attempt to piece together a picture of what life was like in these remote Blue Mountains mining camps in the 1890s.
We thank UNDP for supporting our ground-breaking work in Papua New Guinea, delivering a capacity building program to staff at the PNG Conservation and Environment Protection Authority (CEPA). And we acknowledge our partners the Protected Areas Collaboration and the Tasmanian Land Conservancy for entering into an exciting new joint venture with us, enabling us to significantly expand our conservation education and capacity building program offerings in 2021 and beyond.
Dr Dedee Woodside with some members of the CEPA team at the Kokoda Trail in Papua New Guinea
Significantly, we recognise the ongoing support of our founding members, the Blue Mountains City Council and the Blue Mountains branch of the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service, who have supported us since our inception in 2004.
David Crust, a long-term BMWHI board member and Blue Mountains National Park Operations Director, acted as Incident Controller throughout the fire season in 2019-2020 and was awarded a prestigious Freecitizen award for his tireless efforts to manage the bushfire emergency, including a special operation to save the last remaining Wollemi Pine plants in the wild from the bushfires threatening their secret location. David has been looking after the pines since 1997 but this year was the first time they had had to enact a recovery plan. Despite competing demands for firefighting resources, a deft and complex operation was successful in saving the ancient strand of pine.
The Blue Mountains City Council must also be applauded for their steadfast commitment to sustainability and conservation. Their Bushcare, Trackcare, Streamwatch and Swampcare programs are exemplars of community-based landcare, restoration and conservation, and their ongoing support and involvement in BMWHI projects spanning ecological monitoring to eco-arts is a testament to their commitment. We also applaud their genuine efforts to act on climate change.
Looking ahead to 2021, we are going to continue working to expand our Ecological Monitoring and Citizen Science program, with a new focus on the Blue Gum Forest. We also want to incorporate a wildlife monitoring and management program into our wider bushfire recovery efforts.
Thanks to a grant from the Australia Council for the Arts, we will be reigniting our Eco-Arts program and fusing our citizen science project with the creative arts with the aim of holding a multi-media exhibition towards the end of 2021.
And stay tuned for exciting developments involving our PAC joint venture, enabling us to develop new short courses on protected area management. Courses being scoped by PAC include: an Australian leadership program that focuses on inclusive collaborative partnerships for whole-of-landscape management; building cross-cultural knowledge exchange that is based on ethical and equitable integration of Indigenous knowledge systems with western scientific approaches to conservation; and, supporting the establishment and management of protected areas in Melanesia, based on the successful delivery of our capacity building program in Papua New Guinea.
Finally, we want to acknowledge the valuable support and input of our Board Members, and once again our community of volunteers, associates, donors and partners. We are grateful for everything we were able to achieve in 2020, thanks to their support.
Here’s to a productive 2021!
The BMWHI Team