12.00 midday

Australia’s leading native plant expert, Angus Stewart is a professional horticulturalist who has spent a lifetime working with and breeding Australian plants to make them more gardener-friendly. Angus is well known as a former presenter on ABC’s Gardening Australia. The author of The author of seven previous gardening books, including co-authoring the bestselling The Waterwise Australian Native Garden with AB Bishop, Angus contributes to Gardening Australia magazine and has written for a host of other publications, including a regular column for the Sunday Tasmanian. He is the recipient of numerous awards, most recently the Plant Propagators’ Society International Award of Honour as well as being admitted into the Horticultural Media Association’s Hall of Fame.

12.30pm

Koori Country‘s video is about how cultural (cool) burning protects not destroys wildlife. This 5-minute video was captured and produced by Jose Fernandez from Speck of Dust.

Koori Country Cultural Fire Aboriginal Corporation (KCCFAC) is a non for profit organisation that aim to revive Traditional Aboriginal cultural practices of burning Country as an alternative approach to Hazard Reduction techniques used by private and public landholders and managers. The KCCFAC primary objective is to care for Country (Our Mother Earth), regardless of tenure or ownership. This knowledge has been passed onto KCCFAC by Aboriginal Cultural Elders and knowledge holders. Whilst the Australian landscape is broad and extremely diverse, it is the underlying principles and methodologies of Aboriginal cultural burning that remain the same. KCCFAC now pass on this knowledge to other Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people to help restore Country that has been impacted by wildfire, the absence of fire and or infestation of exotic weeds. Cultural burning also acts to reduce dangerous fuel loads that surround urban development and regional towns and properties.

Popup Speaker Elleke Leurs is a University of Tasmania PhD candidate specialising in sustainable tourism and wildlife conservation. Elleke’s accomplishments include various research and conservation efforts, from koalas in West Australia, quolls and Tasmanian devils in Tasmania, and elephants in Thailand. As the organiser of a successful fundraiser, she raised funds for wildlife carers to assist wildlife during the Huon Valley bushfires in 2019. Her current volunteering activities involve the Seal the Loop project after introducing Victoria Zoo’s fishing-line bins into the Huon Valley. And also with Wildlife and Community Together Tasmania, where she contributes to raising roadkill awareness. 

Today, Elleke briefly shares findings of her PhD research regarding tourists’ emotions when confronted with roadkilled, injured or orphaned wildlife during their visit to Tasmania. Elleke will end the presentation, based on her findings on how we, as individuals, can play a significant role in raising roadkill awareness and reducing animal suffering.

Break for lunch, and Grand Parade at 1pm

1.30pm

Dr Lisa Cawthen is an environmental scientist and educator working on a range of projects that support sustainable practices and on-ground biodiversity management. In the field of chiropterology (the study of bats), this includes using acoustic surveys to identify the presence of threatened bats in south-eastern Australia, understanding the potential impacts of wind farm development on bats and supporting the community to learn more about bats through citizen science projects.  “I cannot remember anyone ever teaching me about Tasmanian microbats at school, and I rarely saw them as a child,” says leading Tasmanian bat researcher Lisa. ”Bats around in the world are in decline with the most vulnerable species often island bats. lutruwita/Tasmania is home to a bat species that occurs nowhere else in the world, and with a ninth bat species potentially being our first climate change refugee, it’s important that we protect bat habitat and keep a watchful eye on our vulnerable bat populations.”

“I am passionate about conserving our hollow-bearing trees which so many species, including our bat species, rely upon,” says Lisa. “To conserve our hollow-bearing trees, we need every-one to understand their value, and so a big part of why I do community bat walks and talks is to engage the community in caring for this limited resource too. Many people are unaware of the role bats play in our environment. People get a buzz searching for bats on a bat walk and they soon discover there is nothing to fear about them,” she says. ” Now more than ever our wildlife need community champions, and whether its kids getting excited about being a chiropterologist on a bat walk, or our community’s elders being blown away by bat facts in a talk, connecting people with wildlife and their habitat is more important now than ever. “

2.00pm

Wildlife biologist Phil Wise came to the Tasmanian Land Conservancy from the Save the Tasmanian Devil Program, where he spent 12 years working on aspects of devils around the state, and he has previously been a park ranger in the NT, working with traditional owners. Phil is the TLC’s Land for Wildlife Coordinator (South) and has been a member of the LFW community himself for over 10 years. He’s also the father of three busy boys, and a keen musician (and host of community music events). 

“Private land conservation plays such an important role in protecting Tasmania’s wildlife habitat, some of which is not well represented in other forms of protected land such as national parks. In my previous role as a park ranger, I was usually a member of a small team looking after massive tracts of land. I can really see the value of recognising and working with lots of inspiring Tasmanians who put their passion into learning about and protecting the land they live on for the collective benefit of conservation.” Phil will be talking about the LFW program and how you can become involved, including the citizen science initiative WildTracker.

2.30pm

Ruth Waterhouse and Lara van Raay will show and discuss their short film Road Kill Warriors, which premiered at the Sydney Film Festival. This film explains Ruth’s campaign to raise awareness about the 400,000 animals killed on Tasmanian roads every year. It was commissioned by the ABC and funded by Screen Tasmania. Lara wrote, produced and directed the film. “I thought it was an important story to share how one person can make a difference and raise awareness of a big problem” she says. “As well as exposing the road kill problem, the film mainly is about the people that are doing the good work to care for the animals and who are trying to raise awareness and change behaviour. It’s a film that will showcase what a wildlife carer, an artist and a community can do in their own small ways to get this conversation happening”. Ruth and Lara will also talk about Tasmania’s road kill app.

3.00pm

Indigenous Speaker Jason Garard will talk about totems and wildlife, and will play us 2 of his songs about aboriginal relationships with country and wildlife. He is part of the southern-based business Tasmanian Land Management.

3.30pm

Cinematographer and Producer Nick Hayward will talk about 3 films (including film excerpts) – Quoll Farm, The Platypus Guardian (both screened on ABC), and The Message of the Lyrebird. Quoll Farm is a documentary about a colony of eastern quolls which live in a hidden valley in the Tasmanian wilderness dubbed Quoll Farm. Wildlife expert Simon Plowright lived with the quolls for a year, observing the unique creatures which are under threat from human encroachment.

Nick explains “I’m a wildlife film maker”. Nick started his career in the 1990s filming for the BBC on Invasion of the Killer Mink which rated almost 12 million in the UK. Later going on to film the Lyrebird sequence in Life of Birds that was voted as the British public’s favourite David Attenborough moment. Nick recently finished directing/shooting The Platypus Guardian (ABC/PBS) alongside Chadden Hunter. Recent credits include Quoll Farm, David Attenborough’s Tasmania and David Attenborough’s Wonder of Song.