Erosion Control and Weed Management on the Cooloola-Southern Great Sandy Coast

Late in 2011 Cooloola Coastcare Assoc Inc was one of only 25 Australia wide successful recipients of MobileMuster & Landcare Australia’s “Old phones, more trees” Grant Program, a collaboration between Landcare Australia and MobileMuster to support hardworking volunteer groups on Australia’s coastline.

Cooloola Coastcare is proud to be one of the dedicated groups working along Australia’s coastline.

“We are located on one of the last natural coastlines in south east Qld” said Cooloola Coastcare Projects Coordinator, Maree Prior. “If we want to maintain it’s resilience and naturalness in the face of coastal erosion that is happening right around Australia, indeed the world, then we need to provide coastal vegetation and adequate buffers from the built landscape. We have those buffers in terms of public space for coastline retreat, but coastal vegetation will slow down erosion; and in ideal conditions during accretion phases (sand build up) the vegetation will greatly assist with the provision of a seed bank and other processes to regenerate the foreshore. This is called coastal rehabilitation; we are lending a helping hand to assist the coastline back to a naturally resilient state.”

“Mowing to the waters edge will definitely exacerbate erosion; and we don’t want to go down the rockwall and/or sandbagging track along our beautiful shores; we are removing exotic weed species and assisting our creeklines and foreshores for future generations to enjoy.”