Save the woodlands, buy a calendar
The calendar is being sold to raise funds for the campaign to stop sand mining in the reserve.
For the past 20 years Margaret Lee has been walking and photographing the Grantville Conservation Reserve.
“I loved the peacefulness initially but then I started noticing the minute plants and they captured my imagination,” Margaret says.
“There are so many tiny native flowers the size of a fingernail.”
Margaret’s photos of those flowers now feature in a new fundraising 2022 calendar, with proceeds going to support the Save Western Port Woodlands campaign. The calendar, which costs $20, includes more than 50 photos of the reserve’s flora and is being sold to raise funds for the campaign to stop sand mining in the reserve.
Margaret, a retired nurse, is a member of the Save Western Port Woodlands group and says she joined because the reserve is critical to threatened native flora and fauna.
“There are 27 work authorities for sand mining in the woodland, 19 are current and seven under application,” she says.
“We risk losing key species like the southern brown bandicoot and flora such as the green striped greenhood orchid.”
Campaigners say most of the forest along the Waterline communities will be lost to sand mining.
Last year State Planning Minister Richard Wynne used his powers to override Bass Coast Shire and call in one of the planned mine expansions, the Dandy Premix plans, convening a planning panel running earlier this year.
If successful Dandy’s open cut mine will operate for up to 40 years and remove the equivalent of eight MCGs worth of vegetation.
It would also see 120 trucks daily use the Bass Highway using new traffic lights, which residents say adds up to about four hours of stoppage on the highway.
The 2022 Western Port Woodlands calendar, $20 plus $5 postage, details www.savewesternportwoodlands.org/ or email savewesternportwoodlands@gmail.com.
