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Botany Lessons to Help Pollies (31 Jan 2025)

Kingsley Dixon has offered lessons in botany for all local political candidates to explain why restoring bushland in Churchlands is vital.

“I am offering ‘Botany 101’,” said the prominent botanist.

Churchlands independent Lisa Thornton took up the offer this week and was taken on a tour of a 700m strip of bushland between Newman College and Churchlands Green.

Prof. Dixon strolled through dry grass, identifying trees and plants, describing their role in the ecosystem, and extolling the virtues of preserving the 700m strip of bushland.

At one point, he rummaged through leaf litter caught in a zamia cycad, picked out soft fibres from deep in the fronds, and explained how Aboriginal people had used it to carry fire.

Prof. Dixon said that because the bush had been untouched for so long, it was a “mini Kings Park.”

“The values I see as a botanist are irreplaceable,” he said. “All political persuasions should be fighting tooth and nail to preserve this.”

Ms Thornton is the only Churchlands candidate to commit to preserving the bushland.

“It’s not just the election cycle, we have to think generations ahead,” she said.

Local MLA Christine Tonkin has pushed for years for the bushland to be excised from Main Roads now that it is not needed for the Stephenson Avenue extension.

She brought the concept of a road to link Pearson Street to Empire Avenue to Stirling Council in 2024.

Ms Tonkin said there were significant traffic issues in the area that needed to be addressed, and if a road review of the area was done, it would be looked at by both Stirling and Cambridge councils.

Both Ms Tonkin and Liberal candidate Basil Zempilas have said they will wait to find out what the community wants before committing to supporting the proposed road or the bush.

Greens candidate Caroline McLean was unable to be contacted.

Meanwhile, Prof. Dixon is calling for the bushland to become a classroom for schoolchildren at the adjacent Newman College.

A school program called Sense of Wonder, which linked science with art in a banksia bushland at Curtin Primary School, is now being introduced at John XXIII College in Mount Claremont.

Prof. Dixon said only half of one percent of Perth’s original bushland was left intact, and each part should be treasured.

“These are all fragments of a tapestry,” he said.

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