Mosaic Map: NRM funded projects
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Protecting Kangaroo Island's native vegetation for the future
Seedlings for revegetation in plant nursery
Revegetation area sown in 2005, linking vegetation corridors
Vegetation corridors at "Sugars Hill View"
Kangaroo Island still has 50 per cent of its native vegetation, including rare plants and habitat for threatened species, much of which is on private land.
The Kangaroo Island Natural Resources Management Board is working closely with landholders to help protect it for the future.
“The main threats to native vegetation and the wildlife that depends on it, are fragmentation and stock impacts,” Project Officer Grant Flanagan said.
The Building a Sustainable Future project aims to help overcome that, as well as to improve water quality and restore the 50 per cent of agricultural land at risk from salinity.
Funding
The Australian and State Governments have provided more than $738,000 for this project.
Support has also come from the South Australian Departments for Environment and Heritage, and Water Land and Biodiversity, and Rural Solutions South Australia.
Activities
Building a Sustainable Future supports landholders who are keen to protect the environment and to develop sustainable agricultural on their properties.
Biodiversity protection efforts have included making links with larger or previously protected vegetation areas, as well as on habitat for rare and threatened species.
“We also work with landholders to establish perennial pastures and saltland agronomy, which helps reduce salinity risks and groundwater recharge, as well as improving surface water quality,” Grant said.
“To concentrate our energy in the right places, and to record our progress, we have developed a GIS mapping system, which documents completed works like fencing, pasture planting, and the planting of native species.”
Achievements
Grant said that in the past two years, the project had helped protect more than 2,000 hectares of native vegetation with fencing to keep livestock out.
“This has seen most sites improve, because young plants are no longer grazed off, and we have seen groundcover return to a number of salt affected areas,” he said.
“Landholders have also re-planted native trees and shrubs on 64 hectares of land, and sown 2,500 hectares of improved pastures. This has not only improved their productivity, it has also increased soil cover, while reducing salinity, soil erosion and water quality issues.”
About 3,500 dung beetles had been released to reduce the surface runoff of nutrients from cattle dung and improve soil fertility and structure. The Board has taken over a nursery and seed bank, which now supplies 10,000 endemic native seedlings every year.
More information
- Grant Flanagan, Project Officer, Kangaroo Island Natural Resource Board Inc: (08) 8553 0488 or grant.flanagan@bigpond.com
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