Lessons from a suburban front yard:  
Over summer, a fascinating array of insect life visited the wildlife garden at the Merri Creek Management Committee (MCMC) depot in East Brunswick. Their presence in the garden illustrates some valuable principles of wildlife gardening. See the pdf article.

Merri Creek Management Committee (MCMC) has been awarded $45,000 from the Lord Mayor’s Charitable Foundation to update our mapping capabilities. The 90 year-old charity aims to make ‘a real and lasting impact on the big challenges facing Melbourne’. Currently, one of its key areas is protecting water eco-systems. 

The native White Elderberry, cousin of Europe’s Black Elderberry, is now a rare plant along the Merri Creek. The European plant has a rich folklore and a new MCMC project aims to secure the local plant’s future. Read more.

MCMC and Collingwood Children’s Farm have partnered to gain a $20,000 Melbourne Water Community Grant to enhance river bank integrity and improve riparian revegetation that was planted in the 1980s. The 2017 project, on the Yarra River at Collingwood Children's Farm, will help to ameliorate impacts of erosion, improve indigenous habitat along the riverbank and reduce sediment and nutrient rich farming runoff into the river. The community of the Abbotsford Convent and Collingwood Children’s Farm precinct were involved in two Community Plantings in 2017: on Sunday 21^st May and on NAIDOC Day Wednesday 6^th July.

If your organisation/group would like to add value to your current works, MCMC may be able to support you in the application and/or delivery of waterway grants. Call Katrina on 9380 8199 to explore the possibilities.

Most of MCMC's on ground work is rehabilitating degraded sites. But what is rehabilitation? Does it differ from revegetation or restoration? Merle & Merri can help you understand these terms.

During Merri Creek Management Committee’s surveys of Golden Sun Moth in summer 2016/17 we learnt three important things:

• Golden Sun Moths (GSMs) don’t mind how much it rains, as long as the grass is kept short.
• Small reserves make it hard for Golden Sun Moths to avoid predators.
• Golden Sun Moths live on the Great Dividing Range.