The objective of the Program is to undertake community-based on-ground activities that support and improve key habitat and biodiversity in Queensland’s national parks and State forests. This project will assist in ongoing fire rehabilitation project works along the eastern shores of K’gari including seed collection, nursery work and planting focussing on the restoration of the areas most affected.

We have been involved with Queensland Parks and Wildlife to ensure the best outcome of this Program. We are collaborating with rangers and other organisations to deliver the best outcome possible to K’gari’s fragile ecosystem. The volunteers have been, cleaning areas that are infested with weeds, clearing tracks, conducting environmental works, painting signs, planting trees.

First field trip was held in November 2022 with more to come in 2023.

The Sunshine Coast is home to the Maroochy and Mooloolah river, both of which suffer from litter pollution. This can have grave effects on aquatic life, water quality and important hydrological processes. For well over a decade our River Patrol volunteers have been removing litter from our waterways. Using our fleet of boats, our community-based volunteers cheerfully remove litter from our river banks, accessing tricky spots and improve the health and aesthetics of our catchment. The litter is then sorted, recycled and measured to report annual statistics on what’s been found. This program is run through ECOllaboration’s Maroochy Waterwatch and funded by the Sunshine Coast Council Environmental Levy.

ECOllaboration designed a community-based Platypus monitoring program that engages local volunteers to help collect platypus data by recording sightings and assessing platypus habitats at three different creeks on the Sunshine Coast.

Platypus are highly sensitive to water quality and a keystone indicator of a health ecosystem.  A majority of ECOllaboration’s work involves catchment restoration via the revegetation of riparian areas and therefore, it is of great interest to monitor platypus as they indicate the success of our ecological restoration efforts.

This citizen science project has been designed to be repeated each year (starting August/September 2022) to engage the community and collect a long-term data set on these elusive creatures. This project is proudly funded by the Sunshine Coast Council.