Willow Warriors is an Adventure Conservation Group. Our volunteers seek to combine the excitement of white-water rafting, flat water kayaking and having fun in the outdoors with Landcare conservation activities.
Whilst the groups Organisational goal is very broad our current activities fall into two categories:
The first is the Willows Out of our Rivers (WOR) project where we map willows along rivers and in wetlands in south east New South Wales to find where seeding willows have spread and then poison these seeding willows to prevent them spreading into our World Heritage Areas, National Parks and other areas of high conservation values. Seeding willow taxa are mainly Black willows and Grey Sallow (Sal. Cinerea) Willows but there are also some seed producing hybrids. We have been involved in two crack willow control programs but they were very specific programs. One was to protect the habitat of two endangered species and the other was to help a local community reclaim their river so they could enjoy it again.
The second is the Maintaining the Hawkesbury Restoration project where we assist landcare groups in the Hawkesbury Nepean Catchment with their landcare projects and engage young volunteers in adventure conservation activities. We visit Landcare sites along rivers in the catchment with active landcare/ bushcare groups or landowners or sites where riparian restoration projects have occured in the past and some maintenance work is required and assist the group site with weeding, tree planting, rubbish removal and in some cases collecting data on the changes to the site. Whilst this project is specifically in the Hawkesbury Nepean Catchment we are also working with the Illawarra young Landcare Group where they ask for our assistance to do something similar in their catchment and have a member living in Canberra who is interested in doing something similar along the Murrumbidgee.
