Recent fires have devastated woodlands in and around Tenterfield over the last few years. Many trees and hollows have been lost reducing breeding/shelter habitats available for native fauna. This loss of tree hollows throughout the landscape is well documented both here, in Australia generally and in many other parts of the world. Hollows provide homes for at least 300 types of Australian animals including 17% of bird species, 42% of mammals and 28% of reptiles. Worldwide more than 1000 species are known to depend on hollows for nesting and roosting.

COME JOIN US  at Tenterfield Park with the Naturalist bird watching group!

An informal field visit exploring some of Tenterfields bird species, spotting, identifying and discussing the affects of recent fires on Bird habitat and loss of nesting hollows with the local Naturalist bird watching group as they share their experience and expertise on all things pertaining to our native bird populations.

There will also be an afternoon demonstration with Matt Stephens, inventor of 'HollowHog' introducing his technique of installing tree hollows on pre-picked Tenterfield Park Eucalypts. The HollowHog efficiently and safely creates large internal cavities through small entry holes in both living and dead wood. No other damage to the tree’s cambium (living tissue) occurs through the carving process meaning that there is little disruption to a tree’s growth.

What is HollowHog? The Hollowhog creates a 50 mm entry hole and then progressively carves a larger and larger hollow of any dimensions up to about 600mm wide and long by 600mm deep. The hollow shape can be easily adapted to the size and shape of the tree limb or trunk that it is being carved in.

As an example, a 300mm long by 200 mm wide by 350 mm deep hollow was carved through a 50 mm entry hole in less than half an hour.

The entry hole size and shape can be targeted to any fauna species through either carving a larger entry hole or adding entry modifiers to reduce the size back down to as small as needed. There are many reports of larger more aggressive species displacing smaller hollow occupants where a hollows entrance is big enough for them to get in.