I am taking a look at what we have been involved with over the past week or so and some upcoming local events. We were fortunate to have Barry Sampson present at a Biological Weeds workshop last week.

Barry covered off on biological weed treatments for common weeds in our area and the group travelled to an area where Parkes Shire Council have been undertaking biological control treatment work with Cochineal Beetles on Tiger Pear that has been working effectively as part of integrated pest management approach.

Other upcoming walks will be held at Nangar National Park and Warraderry State Forest. On Wednesday, June 13 the group will meet at Eugowra at 9.15am. This will be a hard, 7 kilometre walk. If you are interested in joining the group for this walk, please contact Walk Leader, Peter Canon on 6866 1225.

The following walk will depart from Forbes Railway Station on Sunday, June 24 at 9am. This will be a medium, 5 kilometre walk in Warraderry State Forest. Peter Canon will also be leading this walk, so please contact him if you are intending to join the group.

All walks are subject to there being no adverse RFS fire warnings at the time and no closure of the relevant State Forest. Walkers are reminded to bring enough food and water for the day as well as suitable clothing, footwear, hat and sunscreen. Please contact the walk leader the night before the walk if you intend to participate. A $2.00 donation for each walker is appreciated.

I also wanted to take the opportunity to flag that National Tree Day (NTD) events will be coming up at the end of July. In conjunction with Parkes and Forbes Shire Councils, Central West Lachlan Landcare host these annual community events. We are obviously conscious of the weather conditions leading up to and the weather that is forecast after an event, so at this stage we will be running traditional ‘planting’ events, but always keeping the planting conditions in mind.

National tree Day started in 1996 and since then more than 3.8 million people have planted 24 million trees. Aside from the obvious aesthetic and environmental benefits to our communities, NTD brings the added bonus of educating, enjoying time outdoors, improving mental health, connecting with the community and particularly for young people, quite often provides a living, growing tree or shrub that they can see grow as they grow.

We are pleased to have so many committed NTD participants and look forward to more joining us. If you would like to be involved in this years NTD events, please contact me to register your interest. Site details will be up on the NTD website soon.

We held a very successful planting day at PAC Park last Saturday. We were thrilled to have such a fantastic group of people joining us. The area is looking good. We plan to hold another follow up event. Still making a difference, but now that the initial work is done, we can keep on top of things with some smaller events. Until next week, happy Landcaring!