On Saturday, my partner and I joined over 50 fellow Taronga staff, students, volunteers, YATZ, family and friends for a day of tree planting in the Capertee Valley to help tiny birds, called Regent Honeyeaters.

The tree planting was arranged by The Capertee Valley Regent Honeyeater Recovery Group which was established by Birdlife Australia and has  been planting trees to help conservation of the critically endangered Regent Honeyeater for 21 years. The area is an important breeding spot for the birds and in recent years, turning  farmland back to Regent Honeyeater habitat has been received positively with landowners putting their hands up to get involved.

Taronga has been involved with breeding Regent Honeyeaters for a number of years, and officially came on board at Capertee in 2011, providing an average of 50% of the volunteers on tree planting days and helping put in the 110,000 trees so far planted in the Capertee Valley.

We arrived, wielding our shovels and wearing gardening gloves, to an already busy site. We were greeted by a volunteer from the Recovery Group asking if we needed some help getting started – there was obviously no hiding the fact that this was our first time tree planting! After a short demonstration, we were on a roll and planting trees in no time.

We were pleasantly surprised to see the impact a large number of people can make and the area we covered over the course of the day. It is estimated that Taronga hands planted about 1000 trees, in addition to those planted by the Recovery Group volunteers.

It was a great day out - fun, social and a great way to exercise! Most of all, it was fantastic to see people of all ages getting involved and spending time together to make a positive contribution to the environment and be part of the effort to support Regent Honeyeaters in the wild.

Check out some pics from the day here: https://taronga.org.au/album/tree-planting-regent-honeyeaters-august-2014

Felicia Eccles- Media Relations