DAVID Cuschieri is a retail designer, but his spare time is devoted to conservation.
I’ve always been interested in conservation,” he said.
Through his wife Heidi’s work as a wildlife rescuer with Wildcare he said he began to see problems and decided to look for a solution.
“It’s mainly women doing the rescuing and at night out looking for food for the animals wasn’t safe.”
His solution was the Koala Supermarket.
He partnered with Watergum, and with funding from Landcare, he rallied the Gold Coast community and began planting eucalyptus trees to provide food for koalas at Nerang Country Paradise Parklands. Rescuers would be able to go there safely and cut browse for their wildlife in care.
Koalas are required by law to be released within a five-kilometer radius of where they are rescued, but after rescuing a koala with chlamydia in Arundel off a resident’s front lawn, they struggled to find a suitable location to release it. He and his wife released it in the neighbouring golf course which provided a haven for wildlife and a wildlife corridor through the suburb.
From this koala release, David formed Koalas on the Green which involved planting koala food trees on Arundel Hills Country Club golf course in 2019.
The work they did planting trees for koalas at Arundel Hills Country Club turned out to be instrumental in providing the locals with ammunition to fight a proposed housing development on the golf course.
David and Heidi approached Judith Roland from Tamborine Mountain Landcare with the idea of planting a wildlife fodder plantation. So, for National Tree Day 2023, the mountain community came together to plant wildlife food trees around the scout’s hut, allowing rescuers on the mountain to source food for wildlife locally.
David’s current project is the Black Plum Project.
After discovering the tree was endangered with only around 180 known individuals recorded between the Scenic Rim and the Sunshine Coast, David is on a mission to save it from extinction.
He calls it a life raft species, saying it represents a whole ecosystem.
“By focusing on it we might be able to take others (plants) on the same journey. We will be planting other species that belong in the same ecosystem,” he said.
Five city councils, including Scenic Rim Regional Council, have joined the project.
“We are doing surveys to determine what is happening with the tree,” David explained.
“Genetic testing of the different populations will begin next, so we can understand the species and find out what is going on with it.”
Next month the councils will come together to create a species recovery plan which will be submitted to the Federal Government to be ratified.
They will also apply for a protective plant harvest license, allowing them to collect fruit and seeds to propagate them for rehabilitation works.
Scenic Rim has less than five wild black plum trees and none on the mountain. There is one planted in Boonah, one wild specimen in Veresdale Scrub and one confirmed specimen in Wooloooman.
David said the Black Plum Project will also involve educating private landowners about what is on their land and how to maintain it.
“Everyone here can plant endemic trees for wildlife. It’s something small we can do to look after our residents. We think of only people as the residents here, but the wildlife are residents too,” he said.
“People are starting to do it, but we need more.
“We are so lucky we are surrounded by so much wildlife, but we don’t have the same value we have for our pets for wildlife, we need to change our value system.
“It’s about caring for the community and plants and animals are part of that.”
