TRANSCRIPT

Terry Lane
I'm a truck driver. I do it because it's probably the only thing I can do. I was always an armchair conservationist and then one day I just thought "Do it!!".

NARRATION
Although he spends much of his life on the road, Terry Lane lives for his time out here.

Terry Lane
This park is very close to home and now that my children have left home I can do what I want to do, if my wife let's me!!

Tanya Ha
Does she?

Terry Lane
That's the hardest battle, to get out of the house.

NARRATION
For the past five years Terry has been helping look after Organ Pipes National Park. Back in 1972 this whole area was nothing more than degraded farmlands.

Terry Lane
It was a dumping ground, very few trees. The idea was "let's get rid of the weeds"; I quickly learned that conservation is not just planting a tree in the ground.

NARRATION
Nearly every tree you see here has been planted, from seeds native to the area. With countless hours from volunteers, the natural habitat is returning and so is the wildlife.

Tanya Ha
One of the best ways to check the health of an ecosystem is to immerse yourself in it.

Terry Lane
What we are looking for are macroinvertebrates, these are tiny animals without a backbone and they are at the beginning of the food chain... Just be careful because it's getting quite deep... that's the way. You see it's a good workout!! Don't go to the gym, go down to the creek!

Tanya Ha
How's that look?

Terry Lane
Muddy! But that's good. Oh. Wow, there's a lot of caddisfly.

Tanya Ha
They look like little sticks with a tongue on them. There's a shrimp!

Terry Lane
Very sensitive to water quality, there's a stonefly. This is critical for fish, for frogs, the whole food chain. This is a really healthy waterway, you can just tell. The first time I heard the growling grass frog I was so nervous trying to record it, I had to do it three or four times because I was so excited that I'd found an endangered species. It's very important to find out what's happening. Frogs are disappearing all over the world and where we are here it's no different.

NARRATION
Often as late as four in the morning, after a 12 hour shift, Terry will head down to the park to count frogs.

Terry Lane
You don't see frogs, you hear them. I've got the digital recorder, I would note down the temperature, the weather conditions. That data I put down into a field sheet that I've developed.

NARRATION
Every piece of information Terry collects is entered into a database and sent to Melbourne Water. It forms part of a monitoring program on the local environment.

Terry Lane
It's something that's easy enough for the lay person to do it's not difficult, it's collecting data and then sending it off to people that are, well, a lot smarter than me and they make sense of it all. That is a feeling in itself that you're contributing and that's a wonderful feeling.

Related Info

Melbourne Water Frog Census program

Friends of Organ Pipes National Park

Waterwatch Program

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