Rabbits, foxes and serrated tussock. A farm that is not allowed to make money. And what the network takes on in 2027.
Three of the eight articles here deal with the pests costing this district the most: foxes, rabbits and serrated tussock. Two are seasonal, and the window on both is open now, not in spring. The rest is where the network has been since autumn: a farm at Tallarook barred from making money, seedlings raised in strangers' backyards, a petition that reached the Council chamber, and the machinery two member groups will put on your place.
The last article is a question. The 2027 program is not written. What goes in it depends on what members tell me between now and the end of September.
Article 2
The trees come from someone's backyard
TreeProject volunteers raise seedlings at home for landholders they may never meet. Orders for the 2027 season close on 30 September.
Tubestock raised by TreeProject volunteers, going into Glenaroua country. South West Goulburn Landcare Network
TreeProject has grown indigenous seedlings for Victorian landholders and Landcare groups since 1989. Volunteers get training and a kit of seed, soil, sand and forestry tubes, and raise 336 seedlings each in their own backyards over spring and summer. In winter, the landholders and groups who ordered them collect the plants, and the tubes go back to the depot to be washed, sterilised and refilled.
It began when two friends, Maggie McLeod and Belinda Gross, pledged to plant a million native trees, and reached it within fifteen years. TreeProject has now sown over two million seedlings, and in 2023 alone, 361 growers raised 140,000 plants across 189 species.
Glenaroua Land Management Group ordered last September, and TreeProject volunteers raised our tubestock: the three thousand plants that went in along Kurkuruc Creek on 20 and 21 June, more than 120 volunteers helping. Some were raised by residents of an aged care home in Bunyip. A family member wrote to us in April to say her father was outside with his watering can every morning and evening, giving the plants extra attention on hot days. Those trees found their way to Glenaroua.
Orders for the 2027 season close on 30 September. Seedlings ordered now will be sown over summer and planted out the following winter. If you want to choose your species, decide in the next eight weeks, not next autumn with a shovel in hand.
TreeProject's minimum direct order is 500 seedlings, more than many people need, but members can submit smaller requests and have them combined into a single group order, and I would like to coordinate one for our next planting project. If you want fifty or a hundred plants, tell me roughly how many, what for (shelterbelt, creek line, gully, bare paddock corner), and where. One order beats twenty.
Members can also tie a seedling order to a Landcare donation, helping cover project costs across the network. An option, not a requirement, and I would like to know what members think. Either way, register your interest before 30 September.
Saturday 29 August, Upper Plenty. Free, half a morning, and you go home with a bag of gorse spider mites. Presented by Upper Plenty Merri Catchments Landcare Group.
Cubs are in the dens now. For a few weeks, the district's foxes have a fixed address.
A red fox in the Great Otway National Park, Victoria. Shylu007 · CC BY-SA 4.0
A fox in Australia covers more ground in a night than most people own. Radio-tracking of ten foxes across south-eastern Australian farmland found home ranges averaging about 1,180 hectares, with animals walking nearly ten kilometres in a single night. Earlier work in central Victoria put rural home ranges at five to seven square kilometres. If you manage a hundred acres, you do not have a fox problem on your property. You have a share of someone else's.
That is why one-off efforts disappoint. On a New South Wales farm, an intensive shooting campaign killed 47 foxes in twelve nights but only reduced density from 4.18 to 3.26 foxes per square kilometre. Sustained, coordinated control is a different story. Nine years of fortnightly baiting at Glenelg Ark in western Victoria saw long-nosed potoroos detected at twenty sites where foxes were controlled, versus seven where they were not. Across more than a thousand New South Wales properties, lamb survival was higher on farms whose near neighbours also participated.
Fumigation and den destruction belong in August and September: cubs are born then, and the vixen is only likely to be killed in the den during the first three weeks after birth. She starts digging out dens in April and May and keeps two or three alternatives in reserve, so check your dens in May and June and again now. Confirm a fox is using the den, and not a native animal, by scats, tracks and prey remains. Block the entrance and every escape hole with soil, and destroy the den afterwards if possible. A carbon monoxide product is the only den fumigant registered for fox control in Victoria, and no special training or licence is required to use it in this state. Follow the label. Fumigation suits local problems, a den near a lambing paddock or poultry shed.
A fox den entrance in the Little Desert, Victoria. Look for the spoil heap, then check for scats, tracks and prey remains before you do anything. Peter Crowcroft · CC BY 4.0
Do not shoot during a baiting program: it disrupts fox behaviour and reduces the effectiveness of baiting. Shooting also selects for young, inexperienced animals, which boosts breeding among those left and increases the rate at which foxes move in from outside.
If you manage a hundred acres, you do not have a fox problem on your property. You have a share of someone else's.
Baiting with 1080 or PAPP, the two registered fox poisons, requires an Agricultural Chemical User Permit with the relevant endorsement, and carries notice, signage and distance rules. Shooting on your own land needs a firearms licence but no permit. Trapping fills the gaps where baiting and shooting are ruled out: small holdings, urban fringe blocks, an individual animal that has learned to take poultry or lambs. Victoria allows padded-jaw leghold traps only, built and set to tight specifications, checked at least every 24 hours, and a trapped fox must be humanely destroyed as soon as possible. There is no trap loan scheme in this district, but specialist Australian suppliers carry Victor Soft Catch sizes and deliver statewide. Agriculture Victoria's pest line handles approvals and specifications.
Fox scat near Maldon, Victoria. Tapered, twisted and full of fur and seed. This is what tells you the den is not a native animal. Nicole Kearney · CC BY 4.0
Coordinated control is what reduces fox numbers, and there is a good model just to our east. The King Parrot Pest Animal Cooperative runs an umbrella program across the King Parrot Creek catchment, with remote sensor cameras across participating properties, and the monitoring doubles as biodiversity data, which helps fund the program. Chris Cobern, Landcare Facilitator at the Upper Goulburn Landcare Network, is the contact.
In this district, rabbits still cause more damage than foxes or deer, to both production and biodiversity. Foxes rank second, with deer third and increasing. Among weeds, serrated tussock is the worst: regionally prohibited, to be eradicated, not contained. Blackberry and gorse harbour rabbits and foxes, so clearing them counts twice. Rabbits and serrated tussock each get their own article below.
Fox numbers here will not fall because individuals act alone on their own boundaries. They fall when neighbours run the same program at the same time across a contiguous block of country. I will connect anyone who wants to collaborate, whether that is a whole group or two adjoining farms.
Rabbits are the district's most damaging pest. The arithmetic behind that claim, and the planning behind a summer campaign.
Rabbits feeding on ground grazed back to bare soil. Liz Poon, CSIRO · CC BY 3.0
About 16 rabbits per hectare eat as much as one dry sheep, and in higher-rainfall country like ours the figure is closer to 12. A single warren of 12 to 16 rabbits eats what one sheep eats. Count warrens on your property and you have counted the phantom flock you are already carrying. Nationally, rabbits cost an estimated $197 million a year. Like the fox, the rabbit is a declared established pest animal, and every landholder has a duty to control them.
Spring is the wrong time to bait. Agriculture Victoria's rabbit recipe works the other way. Bait in late summer, when feed is short, disease and natural mortality have knocked numbers down, and a rabbit will actually take an oat. Rip warrens straight after baiting, while numbers are lowest and the soil is friable. Fumigate survivors and reopened burrows through autumn and winter, when moisture seals burrows properly. Baiting in spring is wasted effort: feed is everywhere, breeding is in full swing, and baits compete with green pick.
August to October is for planning, and most rabbit programs fail for lack of a plan. Walk your property and map every warren (RabbitScan records them from your phone). Fumigate any active burrow now, while the soil is damp enough to seal, remembering that fumigation alone rarely holds numbers down. Clear the harbour: blackberry and gorse shelter rabbits and foxes, so clearing them counts twice. And talk to your neighbours, because ripping a warren on your side means little if occupied warrens remain next door.
Burrow entrances cut into a soil bank. Map every one of these before summer, because this is what the ripper needs to find. Ann Bentley · CC BY 4.0
The national standard operating procedure is blunt: shooting is ineffective at reducing rabbit populations or holding them low. Spotlighting is a count, not a control program.
Count warrens on your property and you have counted the phantom flock you are already carrying.
Ready-made pindone oat and carrot baits need no permit. Mixing your own pindone, using aluminium phosphide for fumigation, or using 1080 requires an Agricultural Chemical User Permit with the right endorsements. And do not wait for calicivirus: no new release is scheduled. The K5 strain averages a 34 per cent knockdown and can be bought for private use from the New South Wales virology laboratory. One ingredient in the mix, not the mix.
Blackberry at Millbrook, Victoria. Clearing harbour like this counts twice, against rabbits and foxes both. Reiner Richter · CC BY 4.0
Rabbit numbers only fall when neighbours coordinate across the landscape, and summer is the time to start. Email the network with your property address and I will map who else on your road or creek wants in. The Victorian Rabbit Action Network runs training and mentoring for this kind of group effort.
You are required to eradicate this grass, not contain it. The window is open now, and the hardest part is finding it.
Serrated tussock scattered through a grazed paddock on a wet morning. Pale, drooping, and unmistakable once you know it. Harry Rose · CC BY 2.0
Serrated tussock is a regionally prohibited weed in the Goulburn Broken catchment, a different class from blackberry or gorse. Those must be kept from spreading, but under the Catchment and Land Protection Act 1994, serrated tussock must be eradicated. The reason is carrying capacity. A pasture supporting 7 to 15 dry sheep equivalents per hectare can drop to half a DSE when heavily infested, as stock will not eat it. This network has warned members about it since 2012, and seed shed that year can still germinate today: it stays viable in the soil for up to 15 years.
The challenge is that it looks like any other grass. Three field tests separate it from the natives it hides among. Roll a leaf between finger and thumb: serrated tussock rolls smoothly, like a needle, while the native tussocks feel flat. Run your fingers down the blade and you will feel the fine serrations that give the plant its name. Check the ligule, the small flap where blade meets sheath: on serrated tussock it is white, hairless and about a millimetre long, while on most of the lookalikes, snowgrass, silver tussock and wallaby grass, it is hairy.
The ligule: a short white membrane where the blade meets the sheath, hairless, about a millimetre long. This is the feature that settles it. Harry Rose · CC BY 2.0
In August and September, the plant is at its least conspicuous, frost-bleached to a pale gold while the pasture around it greens up. Over summer it reverses, staying green as everything else dries off. In late spring, an infested paddock takes on a purple haze as seed heads ripen, and by then you have lost the year. Flowering stems can appear in late winter, and seeds ripen eight to ten weeks later. Once ripe, the whole head snaps off and blows up to several kilometres. A dense hectare can shed more than two tonnes of seed in a year.
The spikelet, with purplish glumes and the long off-centre awn. Harry Rose · CC BY 2.0
Control is easiest when numbers are low. Chip isolated plants out with a mattock, removing the whole base, and bag and burn anything in flower or seed. Spot spray larger patches. Glyphosate works from May to October, kills in one to four weeks and leaves nothing in the soil, but takes whatever it touches, and bare ground invites the next generation. Flupropanate is the specialist tool, slow acting but persisting in the soil for two to three years to stop germinating seed. It damages native grasses too, and grazing withholding periods can last months for anything beyond spot spraying, so read the label, and never let lactating stock graze treated areas. If preventing seed set is all you can manage, spray topping with glyphosate between mid August and mid October stops seed production without killing the plant. The Victorian Serrated Tussock Working Party's one non-negotiable: do not let it seed.
Most photos will come back as poa or spear grass. The one that does not is worth the whole exercise.
One job before spring, then. Learn the roll test and walk your place, even just the back paddock or the laneway you drive past. Photograph any tussock you cannot name, whole plant then close-ups of leaf and ligule, and email them to the network address. I will tell you what you have and, if it is a problem, what to do about it. Most photos will come back as poa or spear grass. The one that does not is worth the whole exercise.
The two it hides among
Silver tussock, Poa labillardierei. Bigger, coarser and greyer, and the leaf feels flat when you roll it. Harry Rose · CC BY 2.0Snowgrass, Poa sieberiana. The hardest of the lookalikes, but its ligule is hairy where serrated tussock is not. Harry Rose · CC BY 2.0
A petition asking Mitchell Shire Council to establish an agricultural advisory committee has been formally received, with 628 signatures.
On 6 July, the petition was presented to Council's Questions and Hearings Committee, with three people speaking in support. It was tabled at the Council meeting on 20 July, where Council resolved to have officers report back, and a written acknowledgement has since been shared with the network.
Protect Our Farms Inc organised it, collecting signatures at stock feed suppliers, pubs, a veterinary clinic, farmers markets and CFA sheds across Seymour, Kilmore, Broadford, Pyalong, Tooborac, Tallarook, Wandong and Lancefield. Many came from our members, including the Glenaroua Land Management Group.
The request is straightforward. Council already has a Heritage Advisory Committee and an Environmental Advisory Committee, but nothing equivalent for agriculture. Farmers who want to provide input on planning, land use, water or climate must use the general submission process. The petition calls for a standing agriculture and agribusiness committee to advise on food and fibre security, land use and climate impacts.
Protect Our Farms puts the case in numbers: farmland covering 34.2 per cent of Mitchell Shire, 408 primary producer businesses, and more than 600 residents employed, which would place agriculture third among local industries behind construction and transport. Those figures are the group's own, drawn from REMPLAN and Australian Bureau of Statistics data to 30 June 2025. Council's own Rural Economy Profile, now some years old, counted 348 agriculture, forestry and fishing businesses and put agriculture at 4 per cent of employed persons, which is part of why the group compiled fresher numbers.
Collecting 628 signatures from sheds and saleyards is slow work.
Council officers are preparing a report, and councillors will decide. Acting Chief Executive Officer Les Stokes has said the timing depends on the assessment and the meeting schedule later in 2026. Council meetings are open to the public, and agendas are posted on Council's website ahead of time. Watch there for the officer report.
The petition is a member-driven initiative rather than a network project. Collecting 628 signatures from sheds and saleyards is slow work, and getting an item onto a Council agenda takes more patience than most people have.
What Glenaroua and Dabyminga can offer your property
Both groups are taking new members this year, and their machinery changes what one landholder can attempt.
A working bee in the field. The catering trailer is out of shot, but it is doing more work than you would think. South West Goulburn Landcare Network
Glenaroua Land Management Group formed in 1988, when Landcare was just beginning. Its members live across the lower catchments of Sunday, Kurkuruc, Mollisons and Sugarloaf creeks, and the group works on weeds, rabbits, erosion, dryland salinity and the annual tree planting. Meetings are at the Glenaroua CFA shed on Glenaroua-Broadford Road, the third Thursday of February, May, August and November at 6.30pm, usually with soup or a barbecue first. The next meeting is 20 August.
Dabyminga Landcare Incorporated covers the Dabyminga catchment: Tallarook, Broadford, Reedy Creek and everything in between, formed when the Tallarook and Reedy Creek groups pooled their resources. It works out of the Tallarook Arboretum, opposite the Mechanics Institute, and the group has maintained blackberry and woody weed control across the catchment for more than nine years. Its most recent Victorian Landcare Grant was acquitted in January 2026, reporting 18 hectares of weed control and 350 tubestock planted. Both groups are members of Landcare Victoria, which provides public liability and volunteer insurance.
The equipment is not general-purpose hire gear. Glenaroua maintains a spray trailer with a 500-litre tank and a four-metre boom, a tool trailer with Pottiputki and Hamilton planters and a rack of mattocks, a catering trailer, and a direct seeder. Each was purchased for a specific job.
Hand planting limits how much ground a working bee covers in a day; the direct seeder overcomes that. Direct seeding can establish more plants and more species per unit area than tubestock planting, suits large-scale projects, and produces seedlings with deeper roots. Neither method suits every situation, but where direct seeding works it is the difference between a token row of trees and a shelterbelt long enough to sit across a prevailing wind.
Whether volunteers return next year is often decided over that barbecue.
The spray trailer matters earlier in the sequence, because a planting often succeeds or fails before a single plant goes in the ground. Poor weed control is a leading cause of failure for direct seeding, and best practice starts control at least twelve months before sowing. A boom on a trailer covers paddock-sized areas on your own schedule, not a contractor's.
The tool trailer and catering trailer are the unglamorous essentials. Pottiputki planters allow planting while standing upright, which is why a crew finishes the paddock instead of giving up at lunch. The catering trailer feeds everyone, and whether volunteers return next year is often decided over that barbecue.
The clearest return on work at this scale is biodiversity: revegetation in farmed country is used by native fauna, particularly birds, which is what most of the research has measured, and it buffers remnant patches from wind, stock and weeds. The second is how the place looks: a shelterbelt on a ridge, growth along a creek line, a gully that has stopped moving. That is a real reason people take the work on. Production is the open question. Windbreaks measurably alter airflow and microclimate, but for pasture and wool in temperate country the evidence is thinner than often claimed, with few reports of increased pasture growth from shelter outside cold climates. Shelter earns its keep through stock welfare and the first two reasons. Anyone promising you a wool premium from a windbreak is ahead of the science.
Membership is by annual subscription, and brings grant-funded plants and guards, help with applications, field days, training, and people who turn up on the day. Call me, come to your first activity as our guest, and decide afterwards.
Seedling orders close on 30 September, making the next two months our window to shape what the network does in 2027.
The committee is planning for 2027, and the details are not set. Some projects are in motion: a Glenaroua planting we are seeking funding for, seedling orders due soon, grant rounds closing before the end of October. There is space for new ideas, but only if someone speaks up.
So, write to me. Not a formal proposal, just what is on your mind. A paddock that needs work, a gully that keeps washing out, a grant we might have missed, a funder you know how to approach. A piece of machinery in your shed you would lend for a working bee, or a skill you could teach: fencing, seed collecting, chainsaw work, or reading a soil test. Or a bird or plant that used to be here and you would like to see return.
If you are offering a resource, one question matters most: what would it take for you to make it available? A certificate of currency for your insurer? Fuel covered? Another pair of hands on the day? Dates that avoid harvest? Someone to tow it? A note on what happens if it gets damaged? Name your conditions and we will work with them. Vague goodwill is hard to plan for; a clear condition is easy.
The same goes for feedback. If there is something the network does badly, or something you expected from a Landcare group but have never seen offered, I want to hear that too.
Vague goodwill is hard to plan for; a clear condition is easy.
Two dates. TreeProject seedling orders close on 30 September, so planting ideas must reach me before then to secure stock. The next Inland Rail community funding round closes on 31 October and is the most likely source for a substantial project. Anything submitted before the end of September has a genuine chance of inclusion.
Listed by article. Everything here was checked in August 2026.
1. The farm that isn't allowed to turn a profit
Agriculture Victoria (2026) Soil acidity, Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action, last updated 7 April 2026, agriculture.vic.gov.au
Department of Sustainability and Environment (2008) Conservation Plan for the South West Goulburn Landscape Zone: Biodiversity Action Planning in the Upper Goulburn Broken Catchment, DSE and Department of Primary Industries, Alexandra
Prober SM, Thiele KR and Lunt ID (2002) 'Identifying ecological barriers to restoration in temperate grassy woodlands: soil changes associated with different degradation states', Australian Journal of Botany, 50(6): 699-712
2. The trees come from someone's backyard
Millton S (2024) 'TreeProject: from backyard seedlings to rural revegetation', Victorian Landcare and Catchment Management, Issue 88 (Spring 2024): 20-21
3. Fox control starts at the den
Agriculture Victoria (2025) Integrated fox control, Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action, last updated 16 January 2025, agriculture.vic.gov.au
Agriculture Victoria (2026) Leghold traps, Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action, last updated 9 July 2026, agriculture.vic.gov.au. Trap use is governed by the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Regulations 2019
Agriculture Victoria (2025) Invasive plant classifications, last updated 20 October 2025, agriculture.vic.gov.au
Carter A, Luck GW and McDonald SP (2012) 'Ecology of the red fox (Vulpes vulpes) in an agricultural landscape. 2. Home range and movements', Australian Mammalogy, 34(2): 175-187
Coman BJ, Robinson J and Beaumont C (1991) 'Home range, dispersal and density of red foxes (Vulpes vulpes L.) in central Victoria', Wildlife Research, 18(2): 215-223
Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action (2024) Directions for the Use of 1080 and PAPP Pest Animal Bait Products in Victoria, State of Victoria, October 2024
McLeod LJ, Saunders GR, McLeod SR, Dawson M and van de Ven R (2010) 'The potential for participatory landscape management to reduce the impact of the red fox (Vulpes vulpes) on lamb production', Wildlife Research, 37(8): 695-701
Newsome TM, Crowther MS and Dickman CR (2014) 'Rapid recolonisation by the European red fox: how effective are uncoordinated and isolated control programs?', European Journal of Wildlife Research, 60(5): 749-757
Robley A, Gormley AM, Forsyth DM and Triggs B (2014) 'Long-term and large-scale control of the introduced red fox increases native mammal occupancy in Australian forests', Biological Conservation, 180: 262-269
Sharp T (2016) NATSOP-FOX003 National Standard Operating Procedure: Ground shooting of foxes, PestSmart, Centre for Invasive Species Solutions
Sharp T (2016) NATSOP-FOX005 National Standard Operating Procedure: Trapping of foxes using padded-jaw traps, PestSmart, Centre for Invasive Species Solutions
Agriculture Victoria (2025) Integrated rabbit control, last updated 15 January 2025, agriculture.vic.gov.au
Agriculture Victoria (2026) Agricultural chemical user permit, last updated 30 June 2026, agriculture.vic.gov.au
Agriculture Victoria (2026) 1080 and PAPP animal bait, last updated 5 August 2026, agriculture.vic.gov.au
Agriculture Victoria (2023) RHDV1 K5 in Victoria, last updated 14 December 2023, agriculture.vic.gov.au
Centre for Invasive Species Solutions (2012) Economic and environmental impacts of rabbits in Australia, PestSmart factsheet
PestSmart (undated) European rabbits toolkit, Centre for Invasive Species Solutions, pestsmart.org.au. RabbitScan is at feralscan.org.au
Sharp T (2016) NATSOP-RAB008 National Standard Operating Procedure: Ground shooting of rabbits, PestSmart, Centre for Invasive Species Solutions
Victorian Rabbit Action Network, vran.com.au
5. Serrated tussock: act before it seeds
Agriculture Victoria (2025) Serrated tussock, Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action, last updated 2 December 2025, agriculture.vic.gov.au
Agriculture Victoria (2025) Invasive plant classifications, last updated 20 October 2025, agriculture.vic.gov.au
Campbell MH and Vere DT (1995) 'Nassella trichotoma (Nees) Arech.', in Groves RH, Shepherd RH and Richardson RG (eds) The Biology of Australian Weeds, Volume 1, R.G. and F.J. Richardson: 189-202. The carrying capacity figures are as reported by the Victorian Serrated Tussock Working Party
Victorian Serrated Tussock Working Party, serratedtussock.com, identification, life cycle and chemical control pages
6. Farmers' petition reaches the Council chamber
Protect Our Farms Inc (2026) Protect Our Farms Support for an Agricultural Advisory Committee, address to Mitchell Shire Council, 6 July 2026. The shire statistics quoted are the group's own, compiled from REMPLAN and Australian Bureau of Statistics data to 30 June 2025
Thompson M (2026) 'Agricultural committee petitioned', The North Central Review, 7 July 2026
Urban Enterprise (2019) Mitchell Shire Rural Economy Profile, prepared for Mitchell Shire Council, February 2019
7. What Glenaroua and Dabyminga can offer your property
Bird PR (1998) 'Tree windbreaks and shelter benefits to pasture in temperate grazing systems', Agroforestry Systems, 41(1): 35-54
Cleugh HA (1998) 'Effects of windbreaks on airflow, microclimates and crop yields', Agroforestry Systems, 41(1): 55-84
Gibson-Roy P, Zwiersen T, Millsom D, Driver M, Berryman T, Logie S and Carr D (2021) 'Module 14: Direct Seeding', in Commander LE (ed.) Florabank Guidelines: best practice guidelines for native seed collection and use, 2nd edition, Florabank Consortium
Munro NT, Lindenmayer DB and Fischer J (2007) 'Faunal response to revegetation in agricultural areas of Australia: a review', Ecological Management and Restoration, 8(3): 199-207
Useful places to start
Virtual Extension Officer, a free interactive tool covering gorse, serrated tussock and rabbits, tailored to nine landscape types.
