We are delighted to share Merri Creek Management Committee’s new 2026 – 2031 strategy and refreshed brand.

This is an important moment for MCMC. For decades, our work has been grounded in community action, ecological expertise and a deep commitment to protecting and restoring the Merri Creek, its tributaries and surrounding landscapes. Our new strategy builds on those strong foundations and sets a clear direction for the years ahead.

MCMC congratulates one of our key partners, Metro, for their recent award for Excellence in Governance Outcomes – Sustainable Leadership at the Infrastructure Sustainability Council awards in Brisbane earlier this month.

The award recognised the exceptional sustainability and biodiversity outcomes achieved by Metro since the commencement of its role working on the Biosite Management Program in 2017. MCMC manages the majority of these ecological biosites, particularly the most sensitive or complex grassland reserves and many that were neglected or poorly documented.

Metro Trains site, photo supplied by Ben Roberts.

Caring for a creek that stretches over 60 kilometres requires more than just on-ground conservation work. Because Merri Creek weaves through shifting landscapes and diverse communities, protecting it also depends on the relationships between the people and organisations looking after the many different ‘patches’ connected to the creek system.

Attendees at Wollert Community Farm's one-year anniversary celebration. All photos by Maria Herrera, Whittlesea Community Connections. 

If you’re lucky enough to get a window seat on a Melbourne-bound train from Wallan Station, you’ll look out over a landscape shaped by decades of agricultural drainage and modern development.

“Wallan is growing so rapidly,” says Claudia James, from Wallan Environment Group. “Every month or two I notice a high-density housing development that has gone up.”

It’s hard to imagine that this was once the heart of Herne Swamp – a vast, 600-hectare wetland that teemed with thousands of brolgas, magpie geese and black swans. Today, less than ten percent of the region’s original freshwater marshland remains.

Herne Swamp, viewed here from Green Hill, was once a vast, 600-hectare wetland. Photo by Max Roux.