Working bees call out for volunteers in bush regeneration project

The group is in partnership with the Tamar Natural Resource Management, Australian Plants Society Tasmania and the City of Launceston.

Australian Plants Society northern group volunteer Andrew Smith said the reserve was unique for a number of reasons.

"There's about 100 native species that are healthy here," Mr Smith said.

He said one of the local volunteers found aerial photographs from 1945, adding the area had been unspoiled since then.

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"Presumably it's been unspoiled since well before that too," he said.

"This is remnant bushland as it's supposed to be in this area and there's very little of that left in Launceston."

Tamar NRM program co-ordinator Kirstin Seaver said it provided a learning opportunity for locals to get to know the flora in their reserve.

"It also allows us to bring in outside expertise to help us with the process," Ms Seaver said.

She said Tamar NRM had been involved with community-led activities based in the Tamar region.

"We have five themes that we actually base all of our activities on and that's weeds, biodiversity, environmental education, sustainable living and sustainable agriculture," Ms Seaver said.

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"We were aware the plant society were trying to do a regeneration project here and saw a way to help them out with things like loaning the toolbox and trying to help generate some interest from the local community in the volunteer groups."

Mr Smith said the idea was to generate enough interest from the surrounding community and let them run it autonomously.

"We'll obviously stay involved and help as much as we can, but the idea is to let them run it and move on to another project," he said.

Ms Seaver said in the long term, the focus was not just going to be on plants.

"You can see everywhere evidence of small marsupial critters digging holes," she said.

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"As the reserve improves in quality, we should be able to see amazing birdlife and and the small marsupials come back and reside here as well."

Ms Seaver said volunteers could join in on the first Thursday (1pm to 3pm) and Saturday (9:30am to 11:30am) of each month.

"We meet at the entrance at the 73 Brougham Street entrance in West Launceston, near the water towers," she said.

"We have a short briefing about safety issues and where we're going to be working and make sure everybody's got their tools and equipment."

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