Restoration of Coastal Grassy Woodland 

One Park asset on the Yanakie Isthmus, the Coastal Grassy Woodland, is in poor condition and Prom’s Conservation Action Plan gives it a high priority for restoration. Parks Victoria has a long term program to restore the area to its pre-European settlement condition of open grasslands and herb-fields dotted with She-oak and Coast Banksia trees.  

Friends of the Prom is involved in a number of scientific research projects associated with this restoration:

• Grazer Monitoring Project – volunteers visit marked sites every six weeks during the cooler months to identify, count and clear away animal pellets (scats). Grazing animals such as kangaroos, wallabies, wombats, deer and rabbits are putting pressure on Coastal Grassy Woodland and suppressing the regrowth of canopy and under-storey plants. The project is designed to estimate the trend in the population of these animals and inform decisions on their management.

  • In 2017 we began assisting Parks Victoria with a research project designed to assess the population trends of native and introduced grazing animals on the Yanakie Isthmus at the northern end of the Prom. 

  • Parks Victoria has a long term plan to restore the the coastal grassy woodland habitat on the Isthmus. They want to encourage the growth of grasses and herbs between dunes while removing infestation of Tea Tree and Coast Wattle which which have flourished after recent destructive wild fires and threaten to overwhelm the area.

  • The population of different grazing animals – wombats, wallabies, kangaroos, deer and rabbits – have a direct influence on the recovery of grasslands. The University of Melbourne is advising Parks Victoria on a project to monitor these populations by counting animal scats. Volunteers are used to collect data from the field at six week intervals during the cooler months. We visit marked plots to identify and count grazing animal pellets and also to remove pellets from the plot so that they are not double counted on the next visit – that’s why some refer to us affectionately as the 'dung flingers'. Rangers can use this data to assess the size of the animal populations and trends.

  • This project ended in 2025.
     

• Coast Banksia Research – Coast Banksias on the Yanakie Isthmus have been in decline for some time, and Parks Victoria has a number of research projects on the go to find out why.
   

• Propagating banksia seedlings – the seeds are collected locally and seedlings propagated in Friends of the Prom’s Tidal River nursery. The seedlings are used for research projects.