Maintaining Our Hawkesbury River Restoration is a project where Willow Warriors in partnership with the Hawkesbury Youth Landcare Group and the Hawkesbury Rainforest Network visit sites to monitor and maintain the sites that have been restored by landcare and buchcare groups and private landwoners along the Hawkesbury River and its tributaries. The project will start in February 2010. 
 

In 2009 Willow Wariors were approached by a group of young landcarers who were concenred that there was no visable plan to maintain the sites they had helped to restore. So they wanted to initiate a maintenance program with their newly formed landcare group.

The project will have volunteers undertaking single day or overnight kayaking trips covering 5 to 10 kilometres of river each day. They will visit previously restored sites on public and private land where we have consent to do follow up maintenance (weeding and rubbish collection). Each group will spend three to four hours per day doing maintenance and monitoring and three to four hours paddling, swimming and enjoying the river. The restoration projects along the river and its tributaries were undertaken by contractors, landcare or bushcare groups some of which were set up to restore a piece of bushland along the river or by landowners who wanted to restore their section of river and these people may have moved on and so the sites are being re-infested by neighbouring proerties.

The project area involves about 180 kilometres of the Hawkesbury and Nepean Rivers and their tributaries, between Penrith and Wisemans Ferry and the group activities will check 80 to 90 kilometers of river per year and will also be involved in helping with other current restoration projects off the river. The exact area maintained will vary depending on the number of sites along the section of the river. We are working with the Hawkesbury Nepean Catchment Management Authority and local councils to plan the activities and contact the landowners to obtain consent. Along with treating weeds and collecting rubish the group will take photos of the work done on each site, an write activity reports for each site to record the type, area and density of weeds, time spent and any issues that require follow up on the next trip. This report will be forwarded to the Hawkesbury Nepean CMA, Office of the Hawkesbury and the landowner / manager.

Whilst helping maintain these sites the project will seek to increase volunteer involvement in managing natural resources by engaging teenagers and young adults from the Hawkesbury region in conservation volunteering by combining canoeing and camping activities with conservation in a safe working environment. Like the Willows out of Wollemi project and Willows out of Our Rivers project this project will seek to build the infrastructure and skills to empower the young volunteers with a passion for conserving their river to maintain the sites that have been restored with community funding.

The project will also run corporate kayaking events on the river to showcase the work done by the group and other landcarers with the goal of obtaining ongoing corporate funding for the program.