The project reintroduced Aboriginal burning regimes to endangered coastal grasslands to reinvigorate biodiversity and control weedy species.

Valuable advice was sought from the local Aboriginal community to help implement the project.

Aunty Levina White was an instrumental figure in gathering information and assisting council with traditional knowledge.

Project manager Tom Dexter said: “Aunty Levina was able to share her own knowledge and put us in touch with other people from the Koori community who helped council refine the processes”.

The burning regimes come from traditional management techniques that were used for a number of cultural reasons including the creation of open spaces for camping, hunting, ceremonies, communication and burials.

These grasslands are very important places for Aboriginal people as they were lived on for substantial parts of the year.

They were created by annual burning in autumn to clean the site when leaving to go inland.

From a botanical perspective, the burning created highly biodiverse grasslands with many native grasses and herbs.

The grasslands are rare but wide spread, occurring from the North Coast to the South East Bioregion.

In the absence of fire, the grass headlands tend to be invaded by shrubs.

Shrub invasion is a key threatening process as without active management such as annual burning, a canopy layer will eventually take over and the grassland will inevitably cease to be a grassland.

The project has had significant interest around the state as many other land managers from places such as Coffs Harbour and Ballina are beginning to adopt this traditional management technique to protect our endangered coastal grasslands.

This project also won the NSW Coastal Management award in 2015.

For further information call Eurobodalla Shire Council on 4474 1000.