Volunteer

Join us in our conservation efforts…

We currently have several projects where we need your help! Come and learn ecological research techniques and contribute to conserving the beautiful wild places of the Otways and the Great Ocean Road.

Conserving Koalas

The Otways is one of the few places in Australia where you are guaranteed to see koalas in the wild, however they face many challenges and need your help.

Conserving koalas and their habitat is currently a management priority for Parks Victoria, but very little is known about the local koala population. Help us by participating in koala counts so that we can assess population size, koala impacts on vegetation and investigate other potential factors behind tree decline.

You’ll see koalas, learn about different Eucalyptus species, carry out soil testing and habitat condition assessments. You’ll also learn about our work with biofences, tree collars, koala disease testing and genetics.

Thanks to a Parks Victoria community grant the Conservation Ecology Centre will be undertaking an annual survey of koalas and their habitats in 2012.

Join us on:

Thursday 8th, Friday 9th and Saturday 10th March 2012

There will be a training session on the first day as a refresher and for any new team members.  Contact us if you are interested in getting involved.

Of course the surveys will be lots of fun with good food, good company and beautiful field sites!

 

Quest for Quolls

The endangered Tiger Quoll population is declining in the Otways, and this area is one of their last strongholds. By working to conserve the Tiger Quoll as flagship species we help many other native animals in three ways:

  1. The Tiger Quoll has a large home range and therefore requires a lot of habitat, including old growth forests with dead trees containing hollows for breeding. These habitats are also important for a wide range of other species. We are working with project partners to assess wildlife corridors and to rehabilitate vegetation, to increase available quoll habitats.
  2. The Quolls require a healthy prey base of various small mammals, so part of our work is assessing small mammal populations and investigating the threats to these species.
  3. Tiger Quolls suffer from competition with introduced pest species, like the fox and feral cat. These two animals have made a huge contribution to the extinction of many Australian species so we are working to identify the scope of this threat in the Otways and to reduce it.

Come and join us in our Quest for Quolls. Quolls are very hard to find so we’ll be in stealth mode, setting nocturnal camera surveys for them which will also tell us how many competing predators are around. For those fitter folks we’ll be striding out into the bush through rainforests and heathlands looking for quoll latrine sites and potential DNA samples.  If you have a dog and are interested in training for a purpose why not find out about joining our detection dog team?

The project also includes small mammal and vegetation surveys in wildlife corridors and waterways replanted by Landcare, which are key habitats for Tiger Quolls.