TWENTY-FIVE Bunbury residents joined forces with the South West Catchments Council and City of Bunbury to clean up the Shearwater Tuart Forest on Saturday, a notorious dumping ground for household rubbish.
The volunteers, who braved the severe weather, arrived to find the site completely littered with rubbish.
They collected more than 40 bags of rubbish in one and a half hours as part of the Keep Australia Beautiful Week event.
The clean-up was undertaken as part of the Preston River to Ocean Project, a partnership between SWCC and the City to protect Bunbury’s first proposed Regional Park.
Catchment council community engagement program manager Nerilee Boshammer said it was encouraging to see such a passionate group of residents take part.
“It just goes to show that the overwhelming majority of Bunbury residents want to do the right thing and keep these iconic sites clean of rubbish so they can be enjoyed into the future,” she said.
“We’d really like to thank the Withers Progress Association, Dalyellup Residents Group and Dale Alcock Homes, whose members participated in the event and helped to protect this valuable community asset.”
Shearwater Tuart Forest is an important ecological linkage in the proposed Preston River to Ocean Regional Park, which encompasses 915ha of natural areas including the Maidens, Tuart Brook, Hay Park, College Grove, Manea Park and Loughton Park.
This project is supported by the South West Catchments Council, through funding from the Australian Government’s National Landcare Programme and the City of Bunbury.
