Project overview

The Location

The Spirit of the Bunyip focuses on the area north of Western Port between Berwick and Drouin.

Bunyip State Park is at the head of the catchment and contains precious remnants of wet forests and heathland. This landscape once dominated the area, before large scale clearing for grazing and agriculture occurred.

Central to the area is a rich agricultural region of beef and dairy farms, vegetable growing and vineyards. In the past this was the Koo Wee Rup swamp, a haven of wetlands for native fish, amphibians, reptiles and water birds, drained and transformed into farmland during the early 1900s.

At the base of the catchment, Western Port’s fragile coastline of mangroves, marshes and mudflats is recognized as a wetland of international significance. It is the annual destination for tens of thousands of migratory birds from the northern hemisphere. The bay itself is a vital nursery for fish populations while the coastal townships attract hundreds of thousands of tourists each year.

Why investment is needed

The area is mainly rural but under pressure from urban growth. The townships around Beaconsfield, Officer and Pakenham will gradually merge into a continuous urban corridor, and the population of 55,000 will grow to around 118,000 by 2020. The effect is significant pressure on the natural environment. We can't keep adding to the large scale land clearance and waterway modification that has already occurred.

Only 25% of the original remnant vegetation remains and much of that is not protected and its condition is declining.

Significant native species of plants, birds and animals are being lost as their habitat disappears. Birds like the Powerful Owl, the Sooty Owl, the Masked Owl, and the Helmeted Honeyeater are among them. Native fish such as Dwarf Galaxias, and iconic trees like Strzelecki Gums and Green Scent Bark are species under severe threat.

More than half of the rivers and streams in this catchment are in poor or very poor condition and may get worse. Thousands of tonnes of sediment continues to flow from these waterways, silting up Western Port and smothering seagrass beds that are the basis of its fragile ecosystem.

The natural spirit of this area is being lost.

Why invest in Spirit of the Bunyip?

• Spirit of the Bunyip is a timely response to the need for increased environmental effort in this area with high environmental values
• It builds on a decade of community-based Landcare effort, the project is ready to undertake more on-ground work now
• It has a bank of landholders on its books with ready-to-sign land management agreements for new revegetation-offset and carbon-offset projects, ranging from small property scale to larger landscape scale
• The ‘Spirit of the Bunyip’, developed in partnership with the Cardinia Environment Coalition, uses comprehensive and binding land management agreements with landholders to ensure long-term security and ongoing management of revegetation projects.
• The Spirit of the Bunyip area offers a range of more than 15 floristic communities (Ecological Vegetation Classes) to accommodate like-for-like offsetting of native vegetation.
• Spirit of the Bunyip provides expertise in the design and implementation of environmental projects, with quality assurance drawn from the science-based biolinks planning by the Cardinia Environment Coalition and PPWCMA
• With many agency partners including Melbourne Water, government departments and councils, Spirit of the Bunyip links corporate partners to the environmental sector as well as farming, community and conservation networks
• Between 40 and 80 kilometres from Melbourne’s CBD, and adjacent to one of Australia’s fastest growing population corridors it provides excellent opportunities for partner involvement and promotion of your company’s ‘green credentials’
• Spirit of the Bunyip is geared to implement works over a 20-year period to achieve tangible long-term landscape-scale improvement 
• Spirit of the Bunyip also provides a comprehensive monitoring and reporting framework to assess and record net impacts on catchment condition between major infrastructure projects and the offset programs they generate.

SP Ausnet planting day at Beaconsfield - July 2008

In July, 2008 Spirit of the Bunyip and the Cardinia Environment Coalition hosted a planting day for a group of customer service officers from SP Ausnet at a property in Beaconsfield. The planting of over 500 tubestock was sponsored by SP Ausnet and provides a link to Beaconsfield Flora and Fauna Reserve on Cardinia Creek.