Building Wildlife Corridors

The Mexteds have a 30ha property at St Leonards which includes an old watercourse that runs through the middle of the property, eventually ending up in Swan Bay.

Not only is the old watercourse important to the Swan Bay Ramsar site, but could also provide an important wildlife corridor through the property.

‘We really just wanted to re-vegetate this watercourse not only to increase habitat on our property and the links heading towards Swan Bay, but also to increase the environmental value of our property, which is also extremely important to us’

In early 2013, the Mexteds started a project to revegetate 3.3ha of land adjoining the watercourse with the aim to creating a wildlife corridor with local indigenous species of trees, shrubs and groundcovers.

Through Landcare they have been able to get assistance with a plant list, planting advice, plants, tree guards, weed eradication, and some fencing done with the grant.  All the plants have been sourced from the Indigenous Nursery in Drysdale.

The planting so far is growing well, with very few plant losses (see the very early photos).

This project is a great example of revegetation wildlife corridors on the Bellarine and protecting Swan Bay.