Conservation Biodiversity

Hobsons Bay supports significant marine areas, wetlands and coastal parks including Truganina Swamp, the Truganina Explosives Reserve, Cherry Lake, the Altona Coastal Park, Jawbone Reserve, Newport Lakes and the internationally recognised, Ramsar listed, Cheetham Wetlands. A total of five waterways run through the municipality including Skeleton Creek, Laverton Creek, Cherry Creek, Kororoit Creek and Stony Creek.

 

These open spaces provide a home to a diverse range of ecosystems that provide habitat to an impressive range of flora and fauna, including many rare and threatened species. These unique assets are managed by Hobsons Bay City Council, Parks Victoria, Melbourne Water and the Department of Environment Land Water and Planning.

Council conducts a significant array of conservation activities each year. This includes weed management, pest animal control, ecological burning, educational events and revegetation works in partnership with volunteers and the community. These works are guided by Council’s Biodiversity Strategy. The strategy provides the strategic direction to guide Council’s conservation management works whilst ensuring alignment with Council operations, particularly conservation, land use planning and open space planning.

The Biodiversity Strategy and supporting Technical Report are available through the links below:

Biodiversity Strategy Summary(PDF, 377KB)  

Biodiversity Summary 2017-2022(PDF, 4MB)

Biodiversity Technical Report 2016(DOC, 8MB)

 

How can you get involved?

There are several ways that you can get involved and help protect biodiversity within Hobsons Bay.

To find an event near you check out our conservation events calendar.

A hard copy of the calendar is available by contacting the Hobsons Bay City Council Conservation Rangers on 1300 179 944 or ranger@hobsonsbay.vic.gov.au

Volunteer

If you are interested in volunteering, consider joining one of our 'Friends of' groups. Currently, there are eight 'Friends of' groups who contribute vital energy and enthusiasm to the care and management of biodiversity, open spaces, and ecosystems within Hobsons Bay.

Our 'Friends of' groups activities calendar outlines the various projects to be carried out by volunteers throughout the year.

For more information, please visit our conservation volunteering webpage.

Sign up for the e-newsletter

View and subscribe to our quarterly Ranger Ramblings newsletter. It will keep you up to date with conservation and environment events within and around Hobsons Bay as well as providing other interesting information about local parks, flora, and fauna.

Use our sustainable guide

For information on local habitat gardening and what you can do to support native plants and animals in your backyard download our sustainable gardening guide on the Habitat Gardens webpage.

Go bird watching

The Birds of Hobsons Bays Coastline aims to help you identify Hobsons Bays resident and migratory shorebirds, along with some of our more familiar coastline birds and seabirds. Use the booklet to discover birds in wetlands across Hobsons Bay, and help their conservation through monitoring by entering your bird count data online.

 

'Birds of Hobsons Bays Coastline' Pocket-sized field guide(PDF, 3MB)

 

For more information, contact the Council Conservation Ranger on 1300 179 944 or ranger@hobsonsbay.vic.gov.au