North Lorne foreshore's natural 'facelift'
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Work has started on restoring North Lorne foreshore's natural environment.
The Great Ocean Road Coast Committee has started work on removing invasive environmental weeds and re-establishing the area's native vegetation to provide habitat for various native animals and enhance Lorne's distinctive 'bushy' character.
Much of Lorne's natural coastal environment is currently under threat from a wide variety of weeds, many of which originated as popular garden plants that have since spread or been dumped from local gardens. Weed control and revegetation of Crown land foreshore reserves are among the committee's top priorities to ensure native vegetation is protected and degraded areas rehabilitated in line with the Victorian Coastal Strategy and GORCC's Environment and Land Management Plan.
In addition to achieving environmental benefits and highlighting Lorne's weed problem, it is hoped the works encourage locals to rid their gardens of invasive plants and replace them with appropriate native species.
The works include: selectively removing emerging weeds; cutting back, poisoning and removing established weeds; monitoring weed growth; and preparing the area for replanting with native plants. The latter will occur in winter 2009, after which the area will be continually monitored and action taken to ensure a healthy native vegetation community is successfully re-established.
The works have been funded by a $5,000 donation from delegates to the Lorne Conference on Protein Structure and Function, a group of scientists that has met annually in Lorne since 1976 and wanted to put something back into the area.