KES Projects
The Knox Environment Society is involved with a large array of projects and activities. Those listed on this page are just a few examples of the work of the Volunteer Members of the KES.
Sword-Grass Brown Butterfly
[click image to enlarge]
The Sword-grass Brown Butterfly Project (SGGP) was initiated in 1993 by the Knox Environment Society in conjunction with the Knox City Council. We aim to link the populations of the Sword-grass Brown at Wicks Reserve in The Basin and the Old Joes Creek Retarding Basin in Boronia. This will be achieved by planting Saw-sedges, the food-plant of the butterfly's larvae in suitable reserves and schools. Local residents are invited to join in by growing the food-plants on their property.
The Sword-grass Brown Butterfly is an attractive chocolate-brown butterfly with orange markings and a blue eyespot on each forewing and an eyespot ringed with orange on its hindwings. It has a wingspan of up to 7cm.
A favourite food plant of the Sword-grass Brown is the Red-Fruit Saw-sedge, Gahnia sieberiana. The Saw-sedge grows in thickets with arching, narrow, strap-like pale-green foliage with sharp edges. Each fruit tuft produces multiple stems bearing heads of minute flowers in Spring. These stand two metres plus tall and when mature contain numerous bright red seeds. They like moist areas and are part of our indigenous bushland.
"The survival of the Sword-grass Brown Butterfly is threatened by the rapid destruction of the Gahnia swamps in which it breeds, as these swamps are often in the path of urban development."
(Total Environment Centre, Our Wildlife in Peril, 1983.)
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Work in Schools
In recent years the KES has supported local schools in a range of ways.
- Provided funding for the Gould League 'Sustainable Schools Project'
- Supplied many of Knox's schools with thousands of plants to support National Tree Days.
- Conducted weed removal and revegetation work at local schools
- In June 2006 the KES donated approximately 100 plants to the Coonara Community Centre to support a World Environment Day Seminar
- In July 2006 the KES purchased over $1000 worth of Gould League books entitled Living Rivers which were presented to 33 local preschools.
- The KES provides financial sponsorship of the School Pride Awards that form part of the annual Knox Pride Awards.
- Darren Wallace and his team at Operation Revegetation (OR) regularly support students from Wantirna and Fairhills Secondary Colleges, by involving them in seed collection, propagation and pricking out. Plants propagated by the students are labelled, grown on at the Wantirna nursery and eventually planted out at the relevant school by the students who assisted in growing them.
- Early in 2006 Scoresby Secondary College also visited the Koomba depot to learn about plant propagation with a view to improving their school grounds.
- OR and the KES community nursery have also supported individual students to help them meet the educational requirements of specific programs such as the Duke of Edinburgh award.
- Provided landscape advice and plants for a nature garden at the University of the Third Age in Fairpark, Ferntree Gully.
