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Safe Havens - Large Forest Owls Project Workshop
Wednesday, 17th January 2024
The Nature Conservation Council’s newest branch of its Large Forest Owls Project, the Safe Havens Project, funded by the NSW Environmental Trust, has held its first community workshop on Saturday 11th of November, with landholders and local agencies involved in the project.
Learn more about the establishment of this new project here: https://www.hotspotsfireproject.org.au/news/2023-06-28/large-forest-owls-project-expansion
The first workshop as part of the Large Forest Owls - Safe Havens project, was held at Korinderie Ridge Cooperative, a magic property with old growth habitats, resident owls, and ocean views near Woodburn on the north coast.
There were around 35 attendees, including 15 landholders from the Safe Haven project, who were there to learn more about large forest owls, their habitat requirements and the impacts from the 2019/20 bushfires.
Todd Soderquist, Senior Threatened Species Officer with DPE, and Dave Milledge, Wildlife Ecologist and owl specialist, shared the results of their research into owls and highlighted the need for further research to improve our knowledge of owl populations and actions to conserve their habitat.
Pete Knock, Large Forest Owls Coordinator, provided an overview of the Passive Acoustic Monitoring program NCC have been running since 2019, which highlighted the impacts the bushfires have had on resident owl populations.
Marcus Ferguson, Bunjalung man, and cultural advisor with Jagun Alliance, shared his knowledge of cultural fire and the way country speaks to you and the need for us to listen.
Staff from the Biodiversity Conservation Trust and NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service also attended. The responses to an evaluation survey conducted at the end of the workshop were overwhelmingly positive, indicating the workshop was successful in its objectives of increasing attendees’ knowledge of large forest owls, their habitat requirements and how they can improve management of their properties.
Access the Large Forest Owls Project website here: https://www.nature.org.au/owls_project
Learn more about what is happening in this area via Banyula’s newsletter: https://mailchi.mp/049a44513abd/nature-updates-conservation-triumphs-the-latest-from-banyula?e=8bb3330b73