Bulletin - Vol 8 No. 6 November/December 2005

Tackling an environmental pest on Goose Island

by Rosemary Grant, ABC Rural reporter, Monday, 31 October 2005

Goose Island Lighthouse The Goose Island light dominates the southern end of the island.

Goose Island? Did I know where it was? I peered at the blue on the top of my map of Tassie.

Goose Island Consultants Consultant Karen Ziegler, Westside Landcare Group president Helen Duigan; Flinders Island ranger Wayne Dick and Christian Bell from the Marine and Coastal Community Network discuss boxthorn control options for the Furneaux Islands.

Goose Island was out there somewhere, I felt sure. The name suggested a connection with Cape Barron geese, the rare grey-green geese that are most numerous in the Furneaux Islands. I squinted again at the map, scanning the 50 tiny islands shown in the north-east cluster. Finally I found it. Goose Island, 35 kilometres south-west of Flinders Island, a dot on the map with a lighthouse.

These days the little islands in Bass Strait are easy to over look. Most are uninhabited and quite remote. But 200 years ago they were the hub of the sealing industry. They were also a hot spot for shipwrecks. The shallow waters with granite rocks and islands became a real hazard as the maritime trade increased between Van Diemen's Land and New South Wales and Victoria. In 1845 convicts began work on the Goose Island Road Station. The eight-storey lighthouse was completed a year later, and in February 1846 the beacon was lit for the first time. It still shines out today.

Goose Island Cemetery Goose Island has significant cultural heritage values associated with the lighthouse, including a small cemetery.

The lighthouse needed keepers, who needed company, families, food, livestock and gardens. Sheep, cattle and cats were part of the inventory. To contain livestock and provide shelter, granite rocks were stacked into dry stonewalls. African boxthorn (Lycium ferocissimum) was planted as a hardy windbreak. Goose Island was inhabited until 1931, when the lighthouse was converted to acetylene gas and automated. But the transformation of Goose Island, which started with the building of the lighthouse, is still going on today. My chance to see the island and how weeds were taking over came with a fine weather spell in September.

Lighthouse ruins Christian Bell from the Marine and Coastal Community Network inspects the ruins dating from 1846, when the lighthouse was built, to the 1930s when the lighthouse was automated.

At 6 am, with fair weather forecast, I joined a small party on the jetty at Whitemark, the main town on Flinders Island. The Bass Pyramid, skippered by Mike Nicholls, was taking couple of local Landcarers, the park ranger, and folk from the Marine and Coastal Community Network and Department of Heritage to survey the weeds on Goose Island.

I’d seen boxthorn before on Flinders and Cape Barron Island, but nothing like the infestation on Goose. So many plants and so intimidating! We’d landed close by the densest stand of African Boxthorn. Large multi-stemmed plants cover a crescent (approximately 500 metres long and 100 metres deep) in the north-east of the island. It’s an impenetrable thicket, and growing all the time. Starlings spread the seeds. Hundreds of smaller gnarly plants are rooted between the rocks beyond the thicket. The African Boxthorn is destroying critical habitat for burrowing and ground nesting birds, including mutton birds, little penguins, and brown quail, Pacific gulls and Cape Barron geese. Control has become a very high priority.

Lighthouse settlement Boxthorn was bought to Goose Island to provide shelter and enclose for livestock in the 19th Century and is now encroaching on ruins of the former lighthouse settlement.

Chainsaws, loppers, handsaws and herbicide have been used before on Goose Island to attack the weed. In May, members of Friends of the Bass Strait Islands, with support from the Flinders Island Parks and Wildlife office, the Marine and Coastal Community Network, and Envirofund money, spent two weeks in a concerted campaign attacking the infestations near the light station ruins on Goose. The massive attack appears to have been quite effective, with dead plants, poisoned roots, and little regeneration. Walls that were being crushed and crumbling under the weight of the boxthorn have been revealed. 

Stone walls to provide shelter As well as boxthorn, the inhabitants built massive stone walls from the local granite to provide shelter from the Roaring 40s.

Now a debate is beginning on the best method to attack the biggest boxthorn thicket. Suggestions include aerial application of herbicide, fire, or the use of heavy machinery like excavators. At this stage there’s no ‘magic bullet’ solution, and major difficulties arise with all control methods on Goose. With so many weed infestations everywhere in Australia, it’s hard to allocate resources for on-ground work. 

Goose Island tramway The remains of the Goose Island tramway lie covered in vegetation

Control of Boxthorn will start soon on another of the Furneaux Islands. The Westside Landcare Group is planning to ship an excavator to Roydon Island, using a Flinders Island barge. After pushing over and digging out the Boxthorn on Roydon, the Landcare volunteers intend to replant the bare ground with plants and seed collected from that island. Since 2002, Boxthorn has also been treated on Cat, Chalky, Flinders, Isabella, Little Chalky, Mile, Rabbit, South Middle Pasco, North Middle Pasco, North Pasco, and Wybalenna Islands.

On Goose Island, as I jumped over tussocks and dodged the boxthorn prickles, it seemed to me that African Boxthorn could be reduced and eradicated, if activities were planned and resources allocated over a 10-year period. The infestation is so big, you can see the decline in biodiversity and the impacts on many neighbouring islands from the spread of the weed. Goose is a beautiful island with significant historical cultural and natural values. But it’s also so remote, there could be no one around to work on weeds. And it’s so remote that hardly anyone will be there to notice.

Source: http://www.abc.net.au/rural/content/2005/s1494428.htm

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