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Newsletter number 26

Tidbit’s …

Australian Alps wins Tourism Award

The Australian Alps community awareness program has been recognised for its outstanding contribution to the tourism industry through an award received at the Canberra Region Tourism Awards 2001 ceremony in the category of “General Tourism Services”.

Odile Arman, Convenor of the Community Relations Working Group (CRWG), prepared the award submission, highlighting the Community Awareness Program. The program encompasses the activities that have led to the promotion of the Australian Alps as a premier tourist destination as well as raising awareness of the Australian Alps cooperative management program.

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Newsletter number 25

Tidbit’s

Stop press … rising to the challenge

Recently the AALC and Working Group members met to discuss the implications of changed funding arrangements. Not surprisingly everyone turned their thoughts to a new model for the Alps Program.
In brief, the meeting agreed to:

• Retain opportunities for on-ground liaison;
• Continue to provide forums for best-practice land management;
• Maintain 3 – 4 Working Groups of discipline specialists plus short-term project Task Forces;
• Operate within $280K pa with additional agency funding for special projects eg. feral horses;
• Support Australian Alps IYM 2002 activities;
• Investigate complementary Alps plans of management; and
• Advertise for a Program Development Officer across all agencies.

Some of these actions are being implemented as this newsletter goes to press, with a Works Program Development meeting scheduled soon.

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Newsletter number 24

Tidbit’s..

Sharing the knowledge… research from the Australian Alps

Over the last year or so there have been a large number of outstanding natural heritage research projects funded by the Australian Alps Liaison Committee. In the interest of actively promoting this work, the Natural Heritage Working Group has initiated a travelling road show to highlight and promote the valuable contribution these projects have made to our ‘on ground’ management of the Australian Alps national parks. The travelling road show will consist of two one day presentations of the projects and their key outcomes and will be made at Jindabyne and Bright on Tuesday 14 and Thursday 16 November 2000 respectively.

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Newsletter number 23

Tidbit’s…

First Annual Meeting of the Australian Institute of Alpine Studies

The first annual meeting of the Australian Institute of Alpine Studies was held at Jindabyne on 9/12/99. It was a largely informal get together of people currently working on research projects in the Alps. Graeme Enders (acting Regional Manager, Snowy Mountains Region) welcomed everyone and then followed 19 scheduled talks. Dr. Catherine Pickering spoke on the Cooperative Research Centre for Sustainable Tourism, Subprogram in Mountain Tourism at Griffith University. This was followed by four sessions dealing with pest species, botany, zoology and human impacts.

The talks are summarised in the newsletter of the AIAS (available on the AIAS website at http://www.aias.org.au/ ). About 50 people attended the meeting, the main aim and value of which was to discover what everyone was doing and to make links between researchers doing similar projects – or dissimilar projects but with equipment, field sites etc that could be shared. As such it was a great success with a high degree of cross fertilisation of ideas with the venue becoming very much a research hybrid zone.

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Newsletter number 22

Season’s greetings…

What happened to 1999, where did it go!

Another fire season upon us and another year older… Thankfully it would appear that this fire season may be somewhat ‘green’, although things could be interesting in the New Year !

On behalf of the Australian Alps Liaison Committee, I would like to sincerely wish you all a happy and safe break over the festive season. We look forward to your continual support next year. During 1999 the response of staff across the Alps has been to give their time in addition to their normal duties, to become involved with and ensure the success of the Alps program.

Without this level of staff commitment and the energy and enthusiasm of the working groups, the overall program would not have received international recognition as a model of excellence in achieving cross-border cooperation.

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Newsletter number 21

Rare and exciting find in the Australian Alps!

Who would’ve expected that a routine inspection of a Peregrine Falcon nesting area would reveal arguably the rarest item of Aboriginal cultural heritage significance in the Australiana Alps national parks? An Aboriginal digging stick. And it was the Alps’ own eagle-eyed Brett McNamara who found it!

Finding any wooden item of Aboriginal origin still remaining in the Australian Alps was considered so unlikely, that it took some persuading of various experts before it was authenticated. While these discussions raged, the Canberra Archaeological Society was successful in obtaining an ACT Heritage grant to study the site and the stick. Neither the local Aboriginal organisations nor the Heritage Council wanted the stick removed for further study; the stick remains on site in -situ.

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