Page 2572 - Week 07 - Thursday, 1 August 2019
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The Landcare approach has also assisted in bringing greater Aboriginal cultural heritage knowledge into land management. Aboriginal caring for country is better integrated with European land management through Landcare activities. The shift in approach toward land stewardship has aided in Australia being recognised globally as having clean and green agriculture. This in turn creates a competitive advantage for the sector. An estimate of a subset of agricultural pursuits in Australia found that Landcare investments delivered in excess of $1 billion in effort from 1988-2015.
The ACT is fortunate to have a very active community that is involved in the stewardship of natural resources. Following Landcare principles, the ACT government has created ACT NRM as the regional body responsible for overseeing the delivery of natural resource management within the ACT. ACT NRM focuses on biodiversity conservation, sustainable agriculture and Aboriginal cultural heritage.
ACT NRM supports ACT rural landholders to implement sustainable farm practices and become more resilient to drought and climate change. This is through grant funding, capacity building through training and knowledge sharing initiatives, sharing new ideas through trials and demonstrations, and facilitating collaborative activities between landholders.
These activities increase biodiversity conservation on rural land while working to increase productivity. The ACT is privileged to have three community-based catchment groups that operate under the principles of Landcare. They are the Southern ACT Catchment Group, the Ginninderra Catchment Group and the Molonglo Conservation Group.
The ACT catchment groups work with volunteers, rural landholders, schools, businesses and the broader community on matters of environmental restoration, conservation and catchment management. The catchment groups are an ally of government in connecting with the communities that they serve. Equally, their ability to mobilise communities and volunteers and deliver community-based projects around public spaces and infrastructure makes them a stronger partner.
This year the ACT government is funding the catchment groups $245,000 to engage with the community on important environmental initiatives and undertake stewardship activities. The ACT government is also funding the groups $265,000 to deliver Waterwatch and $75,000 to deliver Frogwatch. The ACT parks and conservation service and TCCS urban parks and places volunteer program work with the three catchment groups to support volunteer groups that undertake nature conservation works on public land.
This partnership between the local community and the ACT government enables community stewardship of public lands. There are also 20 volunteer ParkCare groups operating on the national park estate in the ACT and 34 urban Landcare groups operating within our urban reserves. Their activities are as diverse as the groups themselves and include weed control, revegetation, threat mitigation, citizen science, litter collection, urban beautification, tree maintenance, erosion control and community gardens.
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