If you’ve ever watched a surveyor out in a paddock, squinting through an instrument on a tripod, you’ll know their whole job is understanding land. Where it starts, where it ends, how it sits and what it can become. So it makes a lot of sense to us that the team at Parker Scanlon, a surveying and town planning firm based in Hamilton, Newcastle, have decided to give something back to the land too.
Parker Scanlon have been working NSW since 2007, and stretches all the way out to Walgett in the state’s far north-west. They’re an award-winning crew with a heap of experience and their motto says plenty about the way they do business ‘where good people come to get things done’. And we think they have found a simple way to get something good done for the environment as well. For every job they complete, they plant a native tree with us.
It sounds small, but it adds up fast. Every subdivision, every boundary survey and every development application means another native tree going into the ground with a community landcare group, helping to restore nature and build wildlife habitat. Their trees are planted by local people who know their patch of country, and the best part is that Parker Scanlon can see exactly where their trees end up. That’s a lovely full-circle moment for a business that spends its days measuring and mapping land.
There’s a creek in the Hunter Valley that runs through mixed farming country before joining the Hunter River. The creek is called Wallis Creek, and it is home to something rare on the Hunter Floodplain – a handful of huge remnant rainforest trees that have survived for centuries. These trees the last of their kind in this part of the landscape, and the Hunter Rainforest Revival Project is determined to make sure they’re protected in the decades to come.
Over three volunteer days, a mix of local community members and staff from NGM Group’s corporate offices in Newcastle gathered at Wallis Creek to plant along the riparian corridor. For those unfamiliar with the term, riparian zones are the living edges of our waterways, they are among the most ecologically important habitat in the Australian landscape.
We really appreciate the sponsorship that has made this revegetation site at Wallis Creek possible. This site is a crucial link in the chain of Dry Rainforest habitat across the Hunter – one of the rarest and most threatened ecosystems in New South Wales. Without the support of sponsors, projects like this simply wouldn’t happen. Every tree planted here brings us one step closer to reconnecting the fragmented patches of rainforest that remain, and giving the wildlife that depends on them a genuine future in this landscape.
Stacy Mail | Lower Hunter Landcare Coordinator | HRLN
The species planted reflect the diversity and ambition of the project – River Oak, Swamp Oak, Cabbage Gum, River Red Gum, Flooded Gum, Swamp Mahogany, Forest Red Gum, Flax-leaved Paperbark, Prickly-leaved Tea Tree, Native Frangipanni, Soft Corkwood and Willow-leaved Bottlebrush. Together, these native trees and shrubs will establish a critical habitat link between existing rainforest patches across the Local Government Area and the Lower Hunter. A new biodiversity corridor created so that birds, pollinators and wildlife can move through safely as the landscape slowly reconnects.
And those birds and pollinators matter enormously. As the planting matures and begins to flower and fruit, it will attract the kind of wildlife that spreads seed, helping to expand local habitats naturally over time. The project’s mascot, the magnificent Regent Bowerbird, is the species they’re most hoping to entice (see featured image).
Writer: Colleen B. Filippa
With a background in Environmental Science (Melbourne Uni), Colleen is the Founding Director of Fifteen Trees. In 2009, after 20 years in secondary and tertiary education institutions, Colleen left the classroom to start the company. Fifteen Trees is a social enterprise assisting individuals and companies to reduce their carbon footprint by supporting community groups such as LandcareNSW.
