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Last year may have been a disaster on the world’s financial stage, but for the Gippsland Plains CMN it was a success. President Neville Prowse-Brown recalled the highlights in his address to the annual general meeting in November. "Firstly, some of you may not be aware of who the CMN is and what it does. Basically we are a network of people and places and we bring together the managers, public and private, of the threatened vegetation on the Gippsland Plains. As well as private landholders, many of whom have permanently protected bush via Trust for Nature covenants, we count among our members (and our committee) East Gippsland and Wellington Shires, DSE, Parks Victoria, Trust for Nature and, most recently, the Friends of East Gippsland Rail Trail. Our aim is to help everyone manage the threatened vegetation in their care in the best way possible for biodiversity. We were the first CMN in Victoria (and the second in Australia) and there are now seven operating in Victoria and 10 countrywide. This month all those CMNs will meet in Canberra for our national conference which will focus on partnerships.

Locally, some of the programmes we run include the Scattered Trees Project through which we offer landholders incentive funds to fence off their isolated paddock trees. As you will all be aware our farm trees are suffering and one recent report in north-eastern Victoria estimated all would be lost from the landscape in 70 years unless action was taken. We are taking action and this is the third year that we have attracted Federal funds to run this programme. Also this year we have succeeded in obtaining private sponsorship from Bairnsdale Power Station; HVP (Hancock Victorian Plantations) and the Australian Geographic Society to erect artificial nest boxes for the vulnerable peregrine falcon. Our local birds are unique in that they use tree hollows as well as cliffs to nest but active tree nests have declined from 12 to two in the last 20 years. We are working closely with the Victorian Peregrine Project and its director, Victor Hurley, who will be in Bairnsdale shortly to scope out the sites for the first few boxes. Many of these projects have been featured in our regular newsletter which is vital for information sharing.  Among the highlights of 2008 was the appointment of our facilitator, Trish Fox, to the East Gippsland Shire Environmental Sustainability Advisory Board. The Shire has now produced its first Environmental Strategy and has adopted all the issues that we lobbied for (see page 8 of this issue for more details).
In October we hosted the launch of the Strategic Plan for Victorian CMNs. Graeme Dear, chief executive officer of East Gippsland Catchment Management Authority, launched the document for us at Lakes Entrance and we saw a great example of rainforest restoration that involved the East Gippsland Rainforest CMN, two neighbouring landholders, the Catchment Management Authority, Trust for Nature and North Arm/Colquhoun Landcare Group. Also at a State level this year we attended the first of the CMN Statewide Advisory Group meetings in Melbourne. This Group brings together all 7 Victorian CMNS and already we feel it is putting us in a great position at a State and Federal level and there is a growing recognition that CMNs are the way forward because they are run by local people and are great partnerships."

The president formally thanked the 2008 committee who were President: Neville Prowse-Brown (and briefly Trish Fox who resigned to take on the facilitator’s role). Vice-president: Phillip Vaughan. Secretary: Trish Fox. Treasurer (Bill Grant, who replaced Neville Prowse-Brown). Committee: Bruce Adams; Estelle Adams; DSE: Faye Bedford (who replaced Emma Roe), Susan Taylor; Gerard Deery; East Gippsland Shire Council: Megan Dennett, Russell Cornell and Leanne Khan all attended meetings; Parks Victoria: Joe Stephens; Stuart Ritchie; Rick Robertson; Trust for Nature: Robyn Edwards and Brett Mills.

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