Click here to find out about Plains Yam Daisy, or Murnong, and the fascinating hunt for its small bright green tufts among the millions of new shoots in newly burnt grassland at Kalkallo in May 2015.

In 2013-14 we achieved:
• Over 400 community and educational events
• 14,550 plants in the ground.
• Golden Sun Moth and Plains Yam Daisy surveys.
• Working alongside Wurundjeri Elders and the Wurundjeri Narrap team on land management.
• Tackling pollution hotspots in Thomastown

Read about this and more in our latest Annual Report on the MCMC website. See the highlights of the 2013-14 year in the President’s Report, the on-the-ground achievements of our Parkland Management Team, the environmental awareness spread by our Catchment Program Team and of course our yearly finances. More financial details are also available in our latest Auditor’s Report.

In 2014, Friends of Merri Creek contracted MCMC to control serious environmental weeds, then plant trees, shrubs, and dense ground-storey plants at the striking Northcote Gorge for their project, Gorge-ous Views! Restoring the Merri Creek Habitat Corridor.  Melbourne Water River Health Incentives program funded the resoration of this volcanic escarpment on the east bank of Merri Creek north of Heidelberg Rd Northcote. There is still some more work to be done, but this photo story (739KB PDF file) shows the success of the project so far.

Merri Creek Management Committee (MCMC) staff often visit school grounds to deliver environmental education programs and recently we noticed that a lot of the rain tanks, which have been installed over the last decade, were being under-used or sitting dormant.

As part of a new 2014-15 project funded by Whittlesea City Council, MCMC conducted an online survey with all Whittlesea schools to gain knowledge about how they use of their rain tanks. MCMC's Waterwatch Coordinator, Jane Bevelander, is following up these surveys by visiting schools, conducting an onsite audit with school staff, and providing schools with advice on how to better utilise their rain water.

After just two school visits Jane has seen some great initiatives, such as a tank linked to watering a new mini orchard. However for those schools that need improvement, one incentive is funding and support from the project to use tank water in productive way by creating a frog bog on the school grounds.

Merri Creek Management Committee (MCMC) is deeply concerned about the state government’s proposal to rezone the site of the former Lakeside Secondary College at 31 Radford Rd Reservoir, from Public Use Zone to Industrial Zone, in preparation for its sale on the open market.
The rear portion of this property, between the school oval and Merri Creek, has functioned as public open space since the mid-1980s. It has been managed for many years by the City of Darebin as open space for passive recreation, ands biodiversity and waterway significance.

Its values include:

1. The Merri Creek Shared Path/Trail: This trail traverses the site and is part of the Metropolitan Trail Network and connects the Yarra Main Trail north along Merri Creek to the Ring Rd.
2. Significant Linear Open Space Connectivity: The Darebin Open Space Strategy nominates this area as recreational open space.
3. Significant Biodiversity Values: These include nationally-listed EPBC species and communities. These values are mapped and described in detail in Darebin Council’s draft Natural Heritage Plan 2011.
4. Significant Waterway Values: Merri Creek is a Melbourne’s most popular urban creek and is greatly valued by the community.

The Education Department has offered to sell the land to Darebin Council, but at a commercial price that Council does not want to pay. MCMC supports the land remaining as public open space for its important recreational, biodiversity and waterway values, at no cost to the community.

MCMC has received $87,932 from the Helen Macpherson Smith Trust to restore a gap in the habitat corridor along the Merri Creek in Fawkner. The three-year Habitat Heroes project starts in June 2014. It will bring Wurundjeri Traditional Land Owners and the diverse local community together with Merri Creek Management Committee through hands-on activities and events.

The Habitat Heroes project will provide opportunities for greater understanding of, and involvement in local biodiversity. It will also engage Wurundjeri Traditional Owners in land management practices. The Habitat Heroes are both the community members working on restoring habitat, and the Top Ten plant habitat species that are the focus of the project.

The first community planting is on 24 August 2014: participants will be Welcomed to Country by Traditional Owners, see a local snakes and lizards display and help to revegetate gaps in the habitat with trees and shrubs. This will be supplemented with weed control and ecological/cultural burning of native grasslands, enabling the Wurundjeri Narrap land management team and MCMC to work in partnership.

Residents can discover local biodiversity through interpretative events, bird surveys, and finding out how to use the 'Top Ten' Habitat Hero plant species in their gardens.

See MCMC's 2012-13 Annual Report HERE.

Merri Creek Management Committee (MCMC) is no longer publishing the quarterly newsletter, Merri News,   But don’t worry, you can now receive the Merri-e News by email.  Just email MCMC at:This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it and ask to be added to the Merri-e News list. You can still download previous issues of Merri News.

Research by Chris Walsh and colleagues at the Waterway Ecosystem Research Group, University of Melbourne, paints a dire picture of the in-stream ecological future of Merri Creek.  As the middle and upper catchment urbanises:
• Use of current ‘best practice’ urban stormwater management practices will result in loss of existing ecological values in upper Merri Creek.
• The risk of loss of values under Melbourne Water's preliminary Integrated Water Cycle Management Plan is very high
• Much better and stronger strategies for management of urban stormwater are needed to reduce the risk of loss of values.
• Harvesting and use of stormwater is the most straightforward way to do better than we do currently. 
• If stormwater isn’t harvested, very large areas of open space will be needed, ideally along drainage lines, to allow adequate losses of stormwater though infiltration and evapotranspiration.
• If we fail to stem a decline in upstream values, the likelihood of restoring the degraded condition of Merri Creek downstream decreases even further.