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.

“Without a doubt, the significant outcomes achieved through Metro’s Biosite Management Program and various biodiversity connectivity initiatives contributed significantly to Metro receiving the award,” says Biodiversity Manager Ben Roberts.

MCMC has enjoyed a strong partnership with Metro through the program, which aims to increase biodiversity and connectivity along rail corridors in the Greater Melbourne area.

Since 2018, our ecological team has helped Metro restore threatened native grasslands along these rail corridors – work that has delivered a seven-fold increase in threatened plant species at restoration sites, the recovery of three nationally threatened ecological communities, and the presence of five threatened species never before recorded in the rail reserve system.

Much of this success can be traced directly to MCMC’s on-the-ground work, which includes ecological burning, careful hand-weeding around threatened plants, surveys and monitoring.

MCMC staff conducting an ecological burn, at a Metro Train site.

“MCMC manage 20 of the original 30 sites for us, and we really appreciate their expertise, especially when it comes to native grasslands,” says Ben Roberts, Biodiversity Manager for Metro Trains. “As the only ecologist working within Metro, I also rely on Michael Longmore as a sounding board for ideas or concerns that I have.” 

The partnership has benefited MCMC as well, reflecting one of our five strategic objectives: Partnerships and collaboration.

“Working with Metro has allowed us to broaden the skills of our team and has been a fantastic opportunity for us,” says Michael Longmore, Ecological Restoration Team Leader.

“It’s also been a pleasure,” says Michael. “We congratulate Ben and the Metro team for this acknowledgement of their work.”