Bushcare Groups

About this pattern

Bushcare groups have nearly forty years of history in Sydney and greater New South Wales.  They use volunteer effort to engage in in a variety of activities that benefit the local environment including tree planting, bush regeneration, water quality monitoring, monitoring of wildlife populations and community education. They provide a means to guard against invasive species that can threaten biodiversity in the Bushland habitat. Bush care in this way resembles other volunteer-based organisations elsewhere in the world such as those in the US that preserve riparian environments (river keepers). In the US, the efforts of volunteer-based organisations have played a key role in conservation monitoring and their oversight has made national legislation like the Clean Water act so effective.

Pattern Conditions

Enablers

• In Bushcare’s long history, organisations such as the Australian Association of Bush Regenerators have developed a number of accessible resources that help local chapters to identify invasive species, and to monitor and maintain local habitats more effectively.

Constraints

• Some invasive species may be so well established that their eradication/management may prove to be impossible or their elimination may have unintended consequences.

Commoning Concerns

Bush Care as social and biophysical commons

Ownership: Voluntary organisation

Access: Open membership

Use: Ecological monitoring, ecological restoration, conviviality

Benefit: Human and non-human communities

Care: Voluntary organisation

Bushcare has evolved as an inclusive practice of caring for country.  As a consequence, it extends the terms of commoning and common-community to human and non-human species.  The patterns of colonial settler society having wittingly and unwittingly introduced many species. While some have had devastating consequences for the local environment, others have become parts of varied human and non-human livelihoods; for example, the role of wild-invasive goats in rural livelihoods and in the management of other invasive plant species through their grazing habits. The management of plant and animals nowadays as part of country is an ongoing process of negotiation.