Environmental Management Volunteering Portfolio
Executive summary
As environmental management volunteers, we majorly focus on the nature-based protection, high impact campaign that is geared towards reclaiming environmental sanity in coastal regions. the outstanding vision of the volunteer’s program is to maintain and rehabilitate regions and places that are prone to environmental degradation thus minimizing the adverse effects of environmental changes on the surviving organisms within or without the affected regions. this particular report presents an environmental management portfolio report for a visit to the shores of Stradbroke Island. the visit lasted for approximately eight hours where we were able to identify various environmental challenges within the region and formulated some of the immediate possible solutions to some of the challenges and further cited recommendations on how to manage and mitigate some environmental problems that required long term solution. The details of the trip are outlined as follows.
The view of Stradbroke Island, Brisbane Australia
Table of Contents
Environmental Management Volunteering Portfolio. 1
The environmental challenge on Stradbroke Island. 4
Stradbroke Island Environmental Management SWORT analysis. 6
Introduction
Stradbroke Island, natively referred to as Minjerribah is found within the Moreton Bay in the states of Queensland, Australia. A Minjerribah island lies 30 km south-east centre of Brisbane and it covers about 11 kilometres wide and 38 kilometres long. Prior to 1896 storm, the north and south Stradbroke was one single piece of land before it was separated by storm later in 1896 into south Stradbroke and North Stradbroke islands. The island is predominately inhabited by the Quandamooka people as the natives of the land and they have lived in these islands for hundreds and thousands of years. Stradbroke is the second-largest island in the world and the largest island in Australia making it a major centre of a tourist destination for both foreigners and locals due to its unique environment and ecological distribution. The main activities that control the economy of the Quandamooka people within the island are sand mining and tourism due to its diverse natural features such as lakes and seaward beaches across the island. The regional climate is quite favourable as it has a sub-tropical warm climate with mild winters and warm moist summers and rainfall of averagely 1600 millimetres per year and means the annual temperature of about 250C
Stradbroke Island comprised of a diverse ecosystem of different species of aquatic plants and animals that hold more importance to the Australian culture and Quandamooka culture. The island enjoys a large number of tourist due to its unique ecosystem and other features such as sandy beaches, tidal flats, salt marshes and perched lakes that serve as a niche to over 200 birds species, 40 reptile species, over 10 amphibian species, 10 native terrestrial mammals and over 50,000 migratory species from the sea. Addition to these, the island brags of its highest coastal sand dunes and mount Tempest. Mount Tempest is one of the most important physical features on this island due to its complex geomorphological, biological and geological processes. 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. Stradbroke Island is one of the least polluted coastal environment along NSW and Queensland coastal beaches. 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.
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 Stradbroke 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 in a more effective and successful manner. Students were to engage and participate on 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, Stradbroke Island. All these activities were organized to instil 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.
Delegation of environmental management volunteers
An environmental challenge on Stradbroke Island
Upon touring the Stradbroke Island and its environ, a number of environmental challenges spike the attention of students. These challenges pose an environmental threat to human health and 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 sand dunes. These grass are attributed to the bushy vegetation and their presence on the island was a threat to cleans 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 thr4eatenin the safety of tourism along these coastal beaches.
The challenge of prickly pear extended even up to Stradbroke Island. This weed is not from Australian native but rather associated with North American origin. It’s perceived that prickly pear was voluntarily introduced into Australian vegetation as early as 1789 by the Queensland authorities as a source of raw material for the then cochineal dye industry. The prickly pear fast spread across Queensland as it was a hot cake in the dying industry as the trade of garment production was at its peak in the early 1920s. by 1926, the weed had already infested over 70 million acres of land in Queensland and new south wales of Australia. As a team of volunteers, we actively participated in the removal of these unwanted weeds in a convenient manner without causing harm to any other plant. The method of weed removal was through handpicking and uprooting. The uprooted weeds were disposed of in a designated area for proper disposal since it can survive harsh conditions but still germinate given favourable conditions again.
Another environmental challenge that we observed on the island was 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
On actual exercise of Prickly Peer Removal
Discussion
This section describes the Strength, Weakness, Opportunity and Threats (SWOT) analysis the invasive weeds removal and beach clean-up.
Recommendation
Stradbroke 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 personal 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 reduce 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 personal responsibility. As an environmental management student, the trip to Stradbroke 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.