Newsletter 33 Autumn FRIENDS OF WAITE 2016 CONSERVATION RESERVE Inc. www.waite.adelaide.edu.au/reserve/friends/ out seedlings & gripping base of President’s message any that break off near ground Hello from the coal face. Fellow olive level. killers have raised eyebrows at a couple of items in my olive control Hammer bushcare kit. Accordingly I share For using with chisel to ‘frill & fill’ with you the contents of my kit for lignotubers to apply herbicide. your interest. Most of the work I do is ‘making good’ after primary olive Chisel clearance, specifically: As above. A lightweight alternative pulling small seedlings to cordless drill for ‘drill & fill’ treating plants too large to pull technique. Quick & better suited re-treating re-growth stumps to smaller plants. Not included in the kit below but Injector Gun important where there are numbers Alternative to squeeze bottle for of larger missed plants or re-growth applying herbicide. Quick & easy stumps (lignotubers) are, to use, doesn’t leak, works at any COMING EVENTS respectively, a small tree-popper, angle & doesn’t roll down hills and a 10-Litre back-pack sprayer when put down. with a glyphosate : metsulfuron- Walking Bees methyl (Brush-Off®) mix. Here are Bottles of herbicide 1st Saturday & the 10 items in my kit. The kit and 4 x 130 mL bottles of herbicide for 3rd Sunday each contents weigh 3.2 kg in total which use with injector gun. Include 1:5 month. is easily carried. glyphosate (360 g/L) : water mix for ‘frill & fill’ of lignotubers & Sunday June 19th Secateurs treating larger roots remaining All-purpose tool for removing small Gate 82 after excavation. I intend adding trunks & exposing lignotuber for Entry off Hillside Road a bottle with triclopyr : bio-oil treatment; & cutting through roots Springfield basal bark mix for treating small when excavating lignotuber. Single hawthorns etc. Upper working bees most useful tool when traveling light Enter from & treating smaller plants only. Gloves Springwood Park Chemical resistant for use with Eagle on the Hill Pruning saw herbicide. Saturday July 2nd Sharp folding saw for removing Sunday July17th trunks on larger plants and Plastic tool box Saturday August 6th regenerating stumps to access for Lightweight open easy-access box Sunday August 21st further treatment. comfortably fits all tools above. Saturday Sept 3rd Insert small Tek-screws through Mattock Sunday Sept 18th floor at corners to prevent it slid- Mini mattock for grubbing out Saturday 1st October ing down slopes. larger plants; excavating one side of a plant to snap off tap root below I welcome your comments. lignotuber; or to expose lignotuber for herbicide application. Remove sharp ‘pick-axe’ tool on double- Peter Bird sided versions to prevent injuries. Back of tool can double as hammer See page 9 for a photo of Peter’s kit for use with chisel when frilling. Multigrips Gives greater leverage for pulling Friends of Waite Conservation Reserve Autumn 2016 Newsletter Page 1 President’s AGM Report organisation. CVA work crews also spent The Friends of Waite Conservation Reserve time clearing olives in the reserve this year are a small but dedicated group committed for which the Friends provided some train- to restoring the 121 hectares of spectacular ing and supervision. Grey Box Grassy Woodland that forms the backdrop to Waite campus. On weekends, specifically the first Saturday and third Sun- As well we have been investigating the fea- day of each month we assemble to do good sibility of using the Basal Bark Spray tech- nique to speed up the process of primary deeds in the reserve. olive control. Although not confident the technique will have broad application in the As in the previous two years, working bees reserve, we may attempt some trials later have concentrated on systematically walking this year. the reserve and removing olive seedlings where mature olives have been previously Feral deer are a serious pest, killing cleared. In some areas this amounts to only sapling trees and dispersing thousands of a dozen or two seedlings per hectare. But in olive seeds throughout the reserve. Andy later cleared areas numbers can be scary Baker continues to monitor deer activity and we spend much more time working than using ground surveys and trail cameras, walking. and liaises with the Australian Deer Asso- ciation to remove them – thank you Andy. Last year in 16 working bees 26 volunteers removed seedling olives from 94 percent of previously cleared areas of the reserve during On the lighter side we had a lovely time in which we probably removed 100,000 seed- the wind and snow surveying fungi last lings or more. Each year we do better than winter. I thank Helen Vonow, Julia Haska and Tony Robinson for sharing their the last as we remove the backlog of seed- knowledge & helping us to find 18 species. lings. This year we have already completed 30 percent of the reserve after only 3 working Thanks also to the committee for their hard bees so I am confident we will complete our work – Secretary Helen Pryor, Treasurer task comfortably. Lynda Yates, Penny Paton, Erinne Stirling, Peter Lang & Clint Garrett. This year I’d like We also re-treated several hundred re- to single out Clint who has put in a huge sprouting olive stumps by spraying or drill- ing and filling. And we controlled other effort editing four issues of the newsletter, woody weeds - Buckthorn, Hawthorn & producing spectacular fliers, manning Blackberry, and treated localised infestations displays, and contributing many hours of additional work in the reserve tackling of Fountain Grass, Perennial Veldt Grass olives and other weeds. And thanks to all and False Caper. In all our labours the other volunteers who came to working amounted to about 850 volunteer hours. bees and helped to push back the tide of weeds. Jennifer and the university continue to fund ongoing clearance of mature olives. It is slow going, removing a hectare or so each year, One last thank you. I recently had the but we are gradually whittling down the re- pleasure of attending an afternoon tea here maining 23 hectares. To support this process in Urrbrae House to celebrate Jennifer Gardner’s 30th anniversary as Manager of the Friends group applied for, but was un- Waite Arboretum. At the risk of successful in attracting funding for a Green Army work team. We also missed out on a embarrassing her further I would just like funding grant for a trailer-mounted portaloo to thank her for her dedication, enthusiasm, professionalism and hard work to support the team. in supporting the reserve and the Friends We are currently in the process of again ap- group over many years. plying for the Green Army program, once more partnering with Conservation Peter Bird Volunteers Australia as the service provider 25 May 2016 Friends of Waite Conservation Reserve Autumn 2016 Newsletter Page 2 In the Reserve 2016 WORKING BEES Winter/Spring Schedule Walking (Working) Bees are held on the first Saturday and third Sunday of the month, All from Springwood Park via from mid April to early December. Start time is 9:00 am and we generally try to Eagle on the Hill finish at about 12:30pm. Saturday 2nd July Please bring lunch with you, so that we can sit and share time at the end of the walking Sunday 17th July bee. Saturday 6th August Working bees will continue to concentrate on walking cleared parts of the reserve pulling Sunday 21st August seedling olives. In some areas we will also use tree-poppers to remove larger plants and Saturday 3rd September spray or drill & fill regenerating olives Sunday 18th September Working bees will still go ahead even if rain is forecast Saturday 1st October Email reminders are sent out the week beforehand. Contact Peter Bird [email protected] or 0418 853 834 to register your interest. Sunday June 19th Gate 82 Hillside Rd Friends of Waite Conservation Reserve Autumn 2016 Newsletter Page 3 Jewel Beetles Extract from talk presented by Peter Lang at the Friends of WCR AGM. Invertebrates make up over 97% of animal Buprestid larvae are generally wood-borers, species but are often overlooked in wildlife although not usually a pest like some of the conservation. Insects are the largest class of longicorn beetles. Those from subfamily invertebrates, and within them beetles Buprestinae have a very pronounced “flat- (Coleoptera) are the largest order, comprising headed” grub – actually expanded thoracic ¼ of all described species. segments behind the head. There are also bark-borers, stem-borers, gall-makers and My interest in one particular family, the jewel leaf-miners. An example of the latter is the beetles (Buprestidae), was ignited by the genus Aaaaba a tiny beetle that mines the publication in 2006 of Shelley Barker’s book leaves of native Rubus species (native black- “Castiarina, Australia’s richest jewel beetle berries/raspberries), but there is only one genus” in which he described and illustrated native Rubus in SA which is rare and Aaaaba all the known species of that genus. has not been recorded here. Buprestidae is the 8th largest beetle family Information on larval host plant species is in the world with around 14,700 species and lacking for most Buprestids but can be over 1285 in Australia. SA has over 320 spe- established by: cies with more than a third of them in that discovery of non-emerged adults in wood, one genus Castiarina. rearing adults from billets (sections of branches) kept in a container; Buprestids have large eyes and keen eye- observations of egg-laying females; sight, and are often attracted to certain col- identification of larvae by morphology (only ours, traits useful in locating suitable host described well enough for a few), plants as well as mates, since they are not matching DNA barcodes of larvae with known to emit sex pheromones.