When I am cycling, I am usually following paths which run beside creeks and waterways. It’s always a bonus to get away from the noise of the road to cycle among the trees and birdsong, watched by shy wallabies. For a while I have been contemplating joining the local catchment group – they have regular working bees to clean up the waterways and plant more trees. Lately the group has seemed more present and active. While cycling on the weekend, I noticed a sign at Downfall Creek with information about a working bee that weekend. When I was cycling back across a bridge near the dog off-leash area, I noticed a man carrying tools looking across the creek. So I stopped to ask if he was part of the working bee and it turned out he was the coordinator for the northern Brisbane catchment group. It’s been my intention to contribute to nature-based solutions to disaster resilience, ecosystem repair and sustainable transitions in such a citizen-led initiative. If only our planning was more focused on the health of creeks and waterways rather than trading off these ecologies for suburban and urban development.
It was lovely to talk with John, the coordinator, as he spoke animatedly about the importance of creeks and waterways to the community and for biodiversity. He also spoke about the importance of flood resilience and recent rehabilitation further along Downfall Creek was designed to ensure the creek could better cope with a deluge. He talked about the damage to the banks and plantings caused by the most recent flooding and the stranglehold of invasive species.
Creeks in a sub-tropical climate like Brisbane’s are supposed to shaded by beautiful trees. The removal of trees lets light in and results in algal growth which makes the creek unliveable for many species and contributes to the planetary biodiversity crisis. John also pointed out all the recent plantings including some he grew from seed. You can feel the pride he has in caring for this creek and Cabbage Tree Creek, which flows through my locality. Both creeks flow into Moreton Bay at Shorncliffe.
For a long time, our creeks have been treated as drains and dumping grounds rather than foundational for the wellbeing of many living things. In Aspley, parts of the creek have been channelled through culverts which exacerbates flooding and has resulted in some appalling urban design. Creeks bear the brunt of development and their resilience is challenged by the proliferation of hard surfaces and poor environmental management (including invasive species, bushland retention and tree cover).
John invited me to stand on the bridge with him and envision a better, healthier creek ecosystem. It’s lovely to contemplate and I would recommend everyone do this at some point.
The UN Decade for Ecosystem Restoration runs from 2021 to 2030. It ambitiously “aims to prevent, halt and reverse the degradation of ecosystems on every continent and in every ocean.” Catchment groups and conservation groups have a vital role to play in the ‘think globally, act locally’ paradigm of system change. If you spend enough time on the UN Decade’s website you will become frustrated by the failures of governments to act swiftly enough to address climate change and mass extinction. The German government, for example, presently seeks “5-10 role model cities to help us strengthen advocacy at global level under the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, participate in knowledge exchanges and work with pilot cities to kickstart their efforts on urban nature”. In Australia, our largest cities are the state capitals, some of which have become sprawling and destructive conurbations. The City Deals fail to address urban ecosystems.
Also on the weekend I stumbled across some work examining ‘recombinant ecologies’. A 2017 book, Recombinant Ecology – A Hybrid Future? by Ian Rotherham introduces the concept as ecological change arising at the interface of human activity nature processes:
In stirring the pot of ‘ecological soup’, humanity has changed ecologies and trigged novel associations and permutations. Today more than ever, we live in a world of recombinant and hybrid ecologies and this will increase in the future. Recognising this does not diminish the importance of nature conservation though it raises issues and questions that need to be addressed. These processes may be seen as ‘game changers’ in terms of the scope, scale and challenges for future conservation, and to blithely ignore them is naïve and will compromise effective conservation actions.
In reflecting about my experience of creeks and removing invasive species from my yard, this line of thinking is resonant. Rotherham further writes “whilst restoration may be important in compensatory ecology, it does not necessar[ily] produce something that is authentically the same as the original landscape”. Research for my rural design research, identified so many ecosystems in some areas that were the last of their kind or extremely rare. Rotherham refers to a range of strategies and frames for understanding these recombinant and hybrid ecologies. To varying degrees much of what is called nature now (for some an arbitrary and subjective idea or ideal) is hybrid. In visioning a better, healthier creek, I can’t help but wonder how this vision might also be hybridised and what this might mean for future nature or nature futures. For Rotherham, by necessity this needs to consider ‘wilding’:
Future visions should look forwards to a new ‘wild’. Indeed, as argued here, this will inevitably be a new nature forged of recombinant ecologies and intimate mixes of now native and exotic species delivering ecosystem services and functions. Ecological fusion will generate hybrid ecology much as it has done in the past. Humanity has triggered the drivers of these changes but it also has the potential to create a template on which nature can reconfigure its baseline condition.
Perhaps this it the real work of citizen-led catchment groups.
placeblog 
Posted on 26/06/2023
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