SIXTIETH BIRTHDAY CELEBRATIGN
A special date for your diary
Saturday May 12th is the date. "The Jetty" at the Murchison Motel, Somerset is the venue. Time 12 noon for 12:30.
We need to know firm numbers, so please fill out the Form and post it, with your $25, to the Treasurer. There will be photograph displays and we are planning to produce a booklet commemorating sixty years. And of course there will be a birthday CAKE.

Please  reserve seats _________@ $25.00 each for our sixtieth birthday luncheon at “The Jetty”
Enclosed is my/our cheque/money order for_________

Name/s_____________________________________________

Helping the Burrowing Crayfish
Somerset Primary School is not only a place for education, it is the home of the burrowing crayfish. Wetlands within the school grounds include Swamp Barks (Melaleuca Ericafolia) which are a favoured habitat for the burrowing crayfish. Cradle Coast NRM has worked with the school to create a management plan for this area so that it could be protected and used as an outdoor education space
for the students to learn about important local plant and animal species.

Habitat for the burrowing crayfish has been under pressure from land clearing, particularly from removal of paperbarks in wetland areas of the region. Swamp paperbarks have been cleared too such an extent that they are now listed as a
threatened vegetation community. Using the management as a guide 39 students
recently helped plant 218 trees and understorey plants around the remnant wetland. The muddy works were not only a lot of fun for the students, but also helped to revegetate the wetlands, and will one day provide greater shade and shelter for the burrowing crayfish.

Helping Hands on Holidays
Each year more than 46,000 motor home and caravan visitors holiday in Tasmania and stay for an average of 18 days. Cradle Coast NRM and Cradle Coast Authority
Tourism are proposing a six-month trial to invite these visitors to give a hand at local environmental working bees and Land- and Coast-care activities.

The trial program, known as ‘Helping Hands on Holidays’, aims to connect visitors to the region’s communities, give holidaymakers a different insight to our landscapes and provide a local experience to be long remembered and talked about.

A calendar of volunteering opportunities in the region will be compiled by Cradle Coast NRM, and promoted via tourism industry networks to caravan and motor home club members. Interested visitors register to participate, and Cradle Coast

NRM takes care of insurance and induction training.

The trial will run from January to June 2012. For more info call Ian Waller or Belinda Colson 6431 6285.

Fungimap and NRM South are organising a Fungi Festival to be held in Hobart April 26th – 30th. The proposed program is a Symposium on Conservation and Management of Fungi (Thursday and Friday) and Saturday and Sunday there will be workshops and forays about fungi. The Monday session is tentatively set aside for training in the use of the Atlas of Living Australia for fungi records data.

The following weekend, 5th and 6th of May, Fungimap in conjunction with Cradle Coast NRM, will be running some more forays and workshops in the Tarkine.

Rabbit Tusks. The bottom incisors of a wild rabbit are growing like elephant tusks,
curving forward and upward past its nose. They are more than 2 cm long. I read
that when this malocclusion occurs the upper teeth often grow backwards into the mouth). The rabbit can't pull grass and is living on chook pellets.

On with the Motley. An all-black bantam chook moulted, but her new feathers are those of a silver-spangled hamburg - white, with a big black thumbprint at the end of each feather.

A Whistling Woman. My old rooster died, leaving three hens without a leader. So
imagine my surprise when I was awakened a couple of days later by a noisy AARKIDAARK under my window. It was a bossy hen, laying claim to being head of the new pecking order, In best rooster tradition she crows at first light, but clucks normally the rest of the day.