The River Conservation Society (R.C.S.) became aware, during early work in the 1990’s, that many crown reserve areas of bushland in the Shire of York were not being actively managed.

 

The R.C.S. applied for management orders for several reserves with the purpose of retaining and restoring natural habitat and facilitating landscape connectivity. In 2004, after much negotiation between the R.C.S, the Shire of York and the Department of Planning and Infrastructure, the R.C.S. was given permission to care for the 10 crown reserves for the purpose of “Conservation and Landscape Protection”.

Apart from Cowering Well and Tanjinn Well, the reserves have all been formally named by the Geographic Names Committee.  Vegetation survey records for each reserve are held by the R.C.S. and noted on specimen records held in the York Herbarium.  Some reserves have also been surveyed for fauna and aquatic invertebrates.

In 2020 new signage was erected on each reserve thanks to a grant from York IGA Community Chest. In the years since management orders were obtained the reserves were fenced and many were surveyed for flora and fauna and revegetated where necessary. This work continues.

Soil information featured on the ten reserve pages was derived from the Department of Agriculture and Food Western Australia (D.A.F.W.A.) Soil-landscape mapping South-Western Australia dataset. Vegetation Assemblages data was derived from Beard’s pre-European vegetation mapping (D.A.F.W.A. 2012) and give a general indication of the vegetation in the reserve. However, the scale of this dataset is quite coarse and therefore doesn’t necessarily reflect the range of plant communities present in each reserve.  Vegetation assemblages will be updated in the future as work continues on recording data from visits to each reserve.

Inquiries regarding the plant species list and other data held by the R.C.S. can be made to chair@riverconservationsociety.org.

The R.C.S. Reserves Committee (2023) is currently reassessing these reserves to see what work needs to be done for future rehabilitation and protection. Click on the links below to go to the page for each reserve.