Released 15/03/2018
Logs placed into Upper Stranger Pond will provide new habitat for birds and native fish and continue the pond’s ongoing transformation, Minister for the Environment Mick Gentleman said today.
“Following its draining and the removal of carp last year, Upper Stranger Pond is emerging as a wonderful waterway for people to enjoy as well as providing habitat for native animals,” Minister Gentleman said.
“The ACT Government’s Conservation Research team is placing logs as ‘snags’ in five locations around the pond. Above water they will provide perches for birds that are safe from foxes and cats. Below water they will provide shelter and food for the thousands of new native fish fingerlings that were introduced to the pond in January.
“The snags will help us mimic natural conditions that promote native ecology and help maintain good water quality. We fully expect Upper Stranger to be a functioning, healthy small aquatic ecosystem within a few years.”
The logs being introduced to Upper Stranger Pond are being recycled from different sites across Canberra including dangerous trees that had to be removed from urban blocks. The Transport Canberra and City Services Directorate is providing and delivering the logs.
“The pond was drained last year to allow new infrastructure to be constructed as part of capital works to widen the Isabella Pond weir and to construct two new wetlands as part of the Healthy Waterways Project,” Minister Gentleman said.
“We took the opportunity to remove all the feral carp from the pond—amounting to 2.6 tonnes of carp—and thus give the new native fish a fighting chance at survival.
“The area will be further improved by the new rain garden being constructed in parkland beside Upper Stranger Pond. The rain garden will be the biggest in the Southern Hemisphere. In a rain event, it will treat about 1800 litres of stormwater per second before it enters Lake Tuggeranong, reducing the level of nutrients and pollutants entering the lake,” Minister Gentleman concluded.
The rain garden is one of 19 water quality infrastructure projects planned for the ACT and Queanbeyan as part of ACT Healthy Waterways and one of six in the Tuggeranong catchment. Two water quality research projects are also underway.
ACT Healthy Waterways is a joint initiative of the ACT and Australian Governments to improve the quality of water entering our lakes and waterways and flowing downstream into the Murrumbidgee River system as part of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan.
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Mick Gentleman, MLA | Media Releases