Moreton Island commonly referred to Moorgumpin

INTRODUCTION

Moreton Island commonly referred to Moorgumpin by natives an aboriginal history dating back to as early as the European settlement. The Moreton Island stands on approximately 17700ha of land, about 37 kilometers long sand in the center of the Moreton Bay, off the coastal regions of the South Queensland, Australia. To the west of the island is the Brisbane city at about 37 kilometers forming the eastern border with the Moreton Bay Marine Park. This is unique as it is richly furnished with natural features, for this reason, Moreton island was declared a national park in 1986 since over 95% of the entire land is a national park. The efforts t the federal government to preserve its unique vegetation saw an extension of 3.4ha of cape Moreton also being classified as a national park in early 2000. This added on to its aesthetic value of the island in terms of tourism boost as the area attracted a double number of tourists annually than before. Moorgumpin Island is made up of a fragile ecosystem comprising of hundreds of thousands of animal and plant species that holds important value to Australian culture and heritage. Natural features within the island are unmatched and they include sandy beaches, hot water springs, perched lakes, tidal flats, small hilly mountains, forests, and salt marshes.

Moreton Island provides habitat to thousands of animals, plants and weeds with over 200 different birds species, 50 species of reptiles, 11 native mammals, over 15 amphibians, and over 70,000 migratory species from the adjacent Arctic. It also hosts one of the most complex geomorphological, geological, and biological processes that make it special and important to b sustainably managed. However, the aesthetic value of the island is generically being affected by pollution from waste and litter carelessly dropped by either natives or tourists and the invasive weeds that are slowly but gradually encroaching the vegetation. These unique features of the island make are highly valuable to the Australian authorities and make is more important to e sustainably managed for the unique ecosystem of the area. Moreton Island is one of the least polluted coastal environments along Queensland coastal beaches (Brudney, & Meijs, 2019). However, there are still elements of environmental pollution that if not carefully handled and rectified might pose a threat to the tourism sector of the island. therefore this journal explores some of the environmental challenges facing the island with their possible solution for a safer and sustainable environment On this account we as environmental management volunteers organized a trip to the island to have a two-day campout as we conduct environmental clean-up on the island.

Aim

The main goal of the environment volunteerism activity was to give students the opportunity to learn and develop a sense of responsibility in environmental management issues to ensure sustainability. The Moreton Island provided a perfect location for the students to engage, learn and understand some of the common environmental issues facing most of the Australian island or any other island in the world and how these challenges can be environmentally managed more effectively and successfully. Students were to engage and participate in environmental clean-up activities on the coastal beaches of the island and some of the activities that students were to consider include beach clean-ups and removal of invasive species from the ocean beaches to boost environmental sustainability of the second largest world island, Moreton Island. All these activities were organized to instill the sense and art of volunteerism on students and make them appreciate the virtue of contributing to environmental sustainability without expectations of any monetary rewards or gains and expand on student’s environmental management skills.

Environmental challenges on Moreton Island

This section covers the most immediate environmental threats and challenges undertaken during our environmental volunteerism trip to Moreton Island. Upon arrival to the island, we noticed the widespread of invasive weed Prickly Peer weed on the island. Upon touring the Moreton Island and its environ, a number of environmental challenges spike the attention of students. These challenges pose an environmental threat to human health and the posterity of both flora and fauna of the island. on the grounds, the first observable flora was the invasive species of the grey creeping grass on the frontal dunes. These grasses are attributed to the bushy vegetation and their presence on the island was a threat to clean a sustainable tourism environment. Thus there was a need to control the sported of these unwanted grass species along the coastal beaches of the island.  other plants that threaten the sustainability of the island were the goat’s foot, guinea flower and pig face, the danger of these plants was that if left to grow on the beaches, they would eventually attract wild animals out from the mountains and forest to the shores since these shrubs are food to wild animals, therefore, the ensuring the safety of tourism along these coastal beaches.

Another environmental challenge that we observed on the island was the careless management of plastic wastes, the beaches were littered almost everywhere with plastic bottles, wrapping papers, and other forms of litter. This unmanaged litter poses threat to aquatic animals in that they may entangle animals hence causing injuries, plastics when consumed by animals might lead to ingestion complications to aquatic animals.  We actively engaged in the ocean and beach clean-up by picking the scattered litters and utt9ng them into dustbins for garbage collection the authorities

Methods and Results

Discussion

This section describes the Strength, Weakness, Opportunity, and Threats (SWOT) analysis the invasive weeds removal and beach clean-up.

Recommendation

Moreton Island being a tourist destination, the Queensland Authority needs to have a clearly outlined environmental conservation and management plans that would ensure that the beaches are regularly cleaned. The need to e clear guidelines and posts that prohibit careless littering of the beaches and most essentially strategically positioning of garbage bins along the beach and in the entire island for disposing of litter.

The native of the Island needs to embrace environment conservation as their responsibility. This could be effected through the use of effective control methods of eradicating invasive weed species. Having regular inspection and removal before they widely spread thus reduces the efforts of removing these unwanted weeds.

Conclusion

Environment conservation and management require collective efforts from every stakeholder, that is all humans need to embrace it as their responsibility. As an environmental management student, the trip to Moreton Island as a volunteer was an awesome learning experience since we had one on one interaction with nature. The entire SWOT analysis of the environmental management expanded my scope of various management strategies such that they need to be carefully selected and applied not to pose more threats to the endangered species. The trip was awesome and memorable. The trip and environment management volunteerism widen my scope and understanding of the different t types of plant and animal species with the effects of invasive weeds and the threats they expose to other plant species. Through this activity, we have become more aware of the importance of maintaining a clean environment, especially around the shores and oceans.