Community Partnerships

Tasmania Wildlife Hospital
We’ve partnered with the Tasmania Wildlife Hospital in Forth, marking the commencement of a state-of-the-art facility dedicated to the care of Tasmania's endangered raptor species.
 
This funding will specifically support the Tasmania Wildlife Hospital in advancing its Raptor Recovery Program. This includes the construction of several essential aviaries, helping the organisation to uphold best practices in wildlife treatment and care for the region.
 
Dr. Joh Robertson, Chairperson of Tasmania Wildlife Hospital, expressed enthusiasm about the partnership, stating; “We are deeply appreciative of TasNetworks' investment in our mission. The importance of this partnership goes beyond just funding aviary facilities. It enables the Tasmania Wildlife Hospital to establish a unified program to support sick or injured raptor species within one centralised facility – from veterinary treatment and critical care to rehabilitation and research, with the ultimate aim of supporting the regions wildlife rehabilitation network and providing best practice care for Tasmania’s raptor species”.
 
This three-year partnership supports TasNetworks Threatened Bird Strategy, with our commitment to support statewide critical threatened bird treatment, rehabilitation, and conservation efforts.


 

In a significant three-year partnership with Bonorong Wildlife Sanctuary, we have made a strong commitment to the support of their Critical Care service, which plays a vital role in rehabilitating injured wildlife, including Tasmania's threatened bird species. With a network of over 1200 dedicated wildlife rescuers, Bonorong ensures that injured animals receive the critical care and rehabilitation they require.

In collaboration with the highly regarded Bonorong Wildlife Sanctuary we’re expanding our efforts beyond prevention to provide essential critical care services for injured birds and wildlife. This collaboration involves significant funding for the diagnosis and care support at Tasmania's largest 24/7 wildlife rescue service. This ensures that injured birds and wildlife receive top-notch veterinary care.

Greg Irons, Director of Bonorong, expressed the significance of this partnership, stating, "Support such as this for our critical care teams, is essential to assist us with an ever-growing number of animals needing our help. A lot of people do not realise just how many people and resources are used in the critical care area ranging from original assessments and triage all the way through to the medical work and rehabilitation. Best practice with injured wildlife requires many factors working together efficiently, and we are very grateful for the support Tas Networks to help fund that best practice."

We’ve partnered with Rural Alive and Well to provide greater mental health and wellbeing support in Rural and Remote communities across Tassie. Under this partnership, we’re helping to expand the impact and reach of RAW’s community based suicide prevention programs: 

Beyond the Sidelines

Sporting clubs play an important role in shaping connected, resilient communities and help foster a sense of belonging for people living in these areas. Beyond the Sidelines is a unique capacity-building program, designed to support and enable sporting club players, members and officials to better understand mental health, manage their own wellbeing and support their mates in a practical, tangible way.

North West Community Events

Recognising the significant activity occurring in North-West Tasmania as part of TasNetworks’ proposed North West Transmission Developments, this partnership includes a number of dedicated activities, specifically tailored toward supporting communities directly or indirectly impacted by the developments. These events include RAW’s ‘Fast 5 Talks’, various ‘RAW Community Connect’ events and a ‘Utes and Boots’ event to be held in Sheffield.

Located on Tassie’s Central Coast, Hive is the region’s first cultural precinct and serves as both a community hub and a drawcard destination for visitors to the region.

 Inspired by the concept of a beehive, Hive has been designed as a space for community to gather, explore, share and grow. Home to the largest dome planetarium in Tasmania, the first Tasmanian Science Centre and Workshop spaces with experiences designed to educate and inspire.

 As part of a collaborative project between TasNetworks, Hydro and Hive, a new and interactive energy workshop has been developed to further engage students and the broader community with power distribution and generation activities and renewable energy technologies.

 Through this hands-on workshop, children will have a chance to explore the world of magnets and electricity, how magnets interact with different materials and each other and how magnets are used. Using electricity they will make a magnet and using magnets they will make electricity. They will explore the three major renewable energy sources used in Tasmania and some of the challenges of using renewables to supply towns whatever the weather. Suitable for children ages 8 - 12 years old.

We've partnered with Bookend Trust to support scientific research on the endangered Tasmanian wedge-tailed eagle.

This partnership provides funding to support the Where? Where? Wedgie! project, a citizen science project monitoring long-term population changes of the Tasmanian wedge-tailed eagle and other birds of prey. The partnership also supports Dr James Pay’s research at the University of Tasmania. Dr Pay’s research tracks wedge-tailed eagles using GPS tags, discovering invaluable information about their behaviour.

Data received from Where? Where? Wedgie! monitoring, along with Dr Pay’s GPS tag research data, will help us direct our threatened bird mitigation efforts in the right direction to reduce injuries to the wedge-tailed eagles and other birds. 

The Where? Where? Wedgie! surveys run every year in May. If you're in Tasmania at that time, you can take part. Find out more about the Where? Where? Wedgie! project.

In 2022 we partnered with TMAG to help protect Tasmanian threatened bird species and support research and conservation efforts.

Under this partnership, we're funding a part-time technical officer, whose research and technical skills enable TMAG to process, examine and curate specimens of Tasmanian raptors, the wedge-tailed eagle (Aquila audax), whitebellied sea eagle (Haliaeetus leucogaster) and grey goshawk (Accipiter novaehollandiae), for the Zoology collection. The diagnostic capabilities of this new role provide timely information on where and why birds have died or been injured, enabling us to respond quicker to mitigate hazards in high-risk areas of our network to protect more birds. By adding these data-rich specimens to the TMAG collections, we also contribute to building a long-term dataset that will enable future research on trends within the biology and health of Tasmania’s birds of prey.

The partnership has also funded an ultra-cold freezer to increase TMAG’s specimen storage and a forensic light source that detects cryptic signs of burns from electrocution.

In 2020 we sponsored TMAG's ningina tunapri Live Digital Excursion.Primarily designed for schools in rural, regional and remote areas, this program provided Tasmanian school students with a live digital excursion of the ningina tunapri gallery, followed by a unique learning experience with a TMAG Aboriginal Learning Facilitator.

We’re continuing our efforts to protect Tasmania’s iconic birds of prey by joining forces with the University of Tasmania and Greening Australia in a new partnership to provide safer perching places for large birds of prey in the vicinity of our assets.

Designed and built by UTAS Architecture and Design Students, the innovative new perches will be installed alongside Greening Australia’s ‘Species Hotels’, and positioned in proximity to our power poles, which are known to be used as perches by large birds of prey, such as Tasmanian Wedge-tailed Eagles in Northern Midlands area.

We are proud to again be sponsoring Seniors Week in 2023.

Seniors Week is all about celebrating older Tasmanians and their valuable contributions to our community. With over 300 events held across the state, Seniors Week provides great opportunities for older people to engage in local activities and stay connected with their communities. View the full program of events by visiting cota.tas.org.au.

We've partnered with CTST to add a 100% electric vehicle to their fleet.

The Nissan Leaf is used to transport CTST clients to social and non-emergency medical appointments, which greatly assists the team at CTST to manage the increasing demand for medical-related transport across the greater Hobart area.

Find out more about the CTST.