Restoring and protecting the health of our South West estuaries is only possible with sustained, coordinated efforts across the region. Healthy Estuaries WA builds the capacity of regional partners by providing officers with opportunities to learn new skills they can apply to projects that restore waterways and improve estuary water quality.
Each quarter, our ‘Dream Stream Team’ meets to review project progress, discuss challenges and hear from a guest speaker on relevant topics to boost skills in best practice stream restoration. Last quarter, we invited our (office) neighbours from the Healthy Rivers team to teach the group about monitoring progress of waterway restoration.
To visually capture long-term change where we have fenced off and revegetated waterways, our officers will be commencing photopoint monitoring. The photos will help us evaluate the success of our restoration efforts and to learn what is working and what needs tweaking.
Tim Storer, Coordinator of the DWER River Science team, shared with the group that they are big fans of using fixed photopoints to allow consistent photos of an area to be captured and enable visual assessment of environmental condition over time. As it is unbiased, low maintenance and cheap, the use of photopoints enable regular monitoring that can be undertaken by anyone, including our local landholders! It also provides an excellent visual tool for communication of how effective our stream restoration efforts are in enhancing the environment and bringing back biodiversity to previously degraded areas.
By working with landholders to improve the water quality in our streams, rivers and estuaries we are better supporting the native aquatic fauna that make our South West region an international biodiversity hotspot.
The River Science team also demonstrated to the group how they monitor local aquatic fauna as a diagnostic measure of stream condition. They shared their techniques of fyke netting and showed us some of the many fish, crayfish, and macroinvertebrates living in the waterway. We even got to see a long-necked turtle up close!
Michelle Priest, GeoCatch’s Stream Restoration Officer shared, “I really enjoyed seeing what critters were living in the waterway and learning more about ways to monitor waterway condition. The regular project meetings are a fantastic chance for officers to share project wins and brainstorm the challenges, as well as build on our understanding and skills around best practice waterway restoration.”
Check out some of the photos from the day below!
