Announcing Mount Mellum as the 2022 C4RE Nature Refuge
Queensland Trust for Nature are excited to announce this year’s Citizens for Refuge Ecology (C4RE) program will be hosted by Mount Mellum Nature Refuge on Jinibara Country in the beautiful Sunshine Coast Hinterland.
Citizens for Refuge Ecology (C4RE) is a grant funded program provided by the Office of the Chief Scientist of Queensland that uses the power of citizen science to survey the ecology on Queensland’s private Nature Refuge network. Now into its third year, the C4RE program will be hosted for the first time on the Sunshine Coast.
The Mount Mellum Nature Refuge is a stunning 54.87 hectare property located on the southern flank of Mount Mellum, overlooking the Glasshouse Mountains. The property forms a recognised bioregional corridor and contains ‘of concern’ regional ecosystems. The conservation area also contains Lowland Subtropical Rainforest, a Critically Endangered ecological community under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999.
The property has steep inclines and several gullies which feed into both Mellum Creek in the pumice stone catchment and London Creek in the Stanley River. The vegetation is a mosaic of Eucalypt forest and rainforest that will offer citizen scientists with an interesting comparison between the ecosystems. The site already has noted the presence of threatened species of fauna and flora including the koala (Phascolarctos cinereus), the Wallum sedge frog (Crinia tinnula) and the Richmond birdwing vine (Pararistolochia pravenosa).
In previous years, the landholders have been working with the Queensland Trust for Nature as part of the Koala Habitat and Restoration Partnership Program to regenerate and revegetate this vital koala corridor. This year, they have graciously agreed to host our citizen scientists and our C4RE program so that we may learn more about the biodiversity in that area.
The C4RE program will conduct four, weekend-long, camps across the year at Mount Mellum. Each camp focusses on surveying the biodiversity of a particular group of organisms: invertebrates, mammals, birds, and plants. The camps do more than make new discoveries and explore the biodiversity on the property. The camps are designed to teach everyone how they can survey and protect biodiversity in their local area. With increasing global awareness of the wonder of our natural world, and the perils threatening it, citizen science is the perfect tool to increase involvement of the humans of this planet in protecting and promoting the wonderful world around us.
Queensland Trust for Nature is excited to announce Mount Mellum Nature Refuge as the 2022 host property for the C4RE program. The property will provide the perfect location for the program as its home to a wonderful mix of habitats from Eucalypt-dominated Woodlands and Lowland Subtropical Rainforest as well as freshwater creeks flowing through the property. Our first camp, Invert Adventure is approaching quickly in April and will focus on all invertebrates. Tune into QTFN’s social media for more information or email events@qtfn.org.au to get added on the C4RE mailing list for 2022. 
