INTERESTED community members have been invited to this week’s Hamilton Field Naturalists Club’s (HFNC) special presentation on River Red Gums by ecologist, Dr Greg Kerr.

River Red Gum woodlands are an iconic part of the south-western region of Victoria and they were seen by early settlers as part of ideal farming country.

Today, most River Red Gum woodland now exists as paddock trees and small remnants dependent on access to a shallow water table.

For various reasons the River Red Gum population across the region now has a preponderance of veteran trees with many elements of the understorey and associated community lost or highly modified through grazing, agriculture or forestry.

In the extreme, the isolated older trees are now surrounded by dense blue-gum plantations, with many trees appearing highly stressed and a proportion of the older trees being lost on an annual basis; not all are being replaced through natural regeneration or revegetation programs.

Nature Glenelg Trust has been monitoring the condition of the River Red Gums at Walker Swamp on the southeastern edge of the Grampians annually since the restoration of the wetland to more natural levels in 2019.

The method of monitoring of red gum condition has given many insights into the range of threats they are subject to and provides a method of assessing and scoring both decline and recovery of both individual trees and the community overall.

Dr Kerr will discuss the River Red Gum community ecology and how to assess tree condition, and will look at the Walker Swamp area red gum changes recorded over four years since more natural water levels and inundation patterns were restored to the wetland complex. This special presentation will be held at HIRL on Thursday, November 16 and is open to both HFNC members and visitors and anyone who values these trees in our region’s landscape.