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Grants programme for South East landholders
Thanks to an ambitious project in South Australia's lower south east, the majority of landholders in the region have had access to environmental grants to help them adopt sustainable land-use practices - and 270 have seized the opportunity.
Funding
Through the Sustaining the South programme, which ran from 2000 to 2005, landholders from Naracoorte in the north down to Port MacDonnell in the south had access to almost $1 million from the Australian Government's Natural Heritage Trust - and support from the State Government - in the form of devolved grants.
Donna Bartsch, Environmental Consultant with Rural Solutions SA, said grants were available for a range of on-farm activities such as fencing native vegetation, wetlands and watercourses; farm forestry and planting of native vegetation in the form of windbreaks, blocks and wildlife corridors.
Activities
"The highest uptake of funding was for the establishment of windbreaks," she said.
"Windbreaks not only increase areas of native vegetation and provide habitat for species such as the nationally threatened Red-tailed Black Cockatoo, but they also provide tangible shelter and production benefits for the landholders themselves.
"This kind of work is a good introduction for many farmers on how to trial and incorporate native vegetation works on their properties. By seeing results on a small scale, this often encourages them to expand. We saw a number of landholders apply for grants each year, and a number link patches of remnant vegetation and create wildlife corridors.
"The landholders who took part in Sustaining the South have achieved some amazing results - they have erected protective fencing around 1400 hectares of native vegetation, wetlands and watercourses, as well as planting an additional 300-400 hectares of land with local native species and creating 400 hectares of farm forestry.
"Work on this scale has an additional aesthetic benefit for anyone living in or visiting the area.
"Now these areas have been fenced, there's scope for us to provide technical assistance to landholders on how to manage them into the future."
Donna said the success of the project was due to the commitment of local landholders and the power of word of mouth. "We had neighbours seeing the transformations occurring across the fence and saying to us 'if they're doing it, I'll do it too,'" she said.
The success of Sustaining the South shows the grass - or native plants in this case - can be greener on both sides of the fence.
More information
- Donna Bartsch: (08) 8762 9100 or bartsch.donna@saugov.sa.gov.au
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