Mosaic Map: NRM funded projects
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Good neighbours fight salinity in Yarra Yarra
A salt lake for a neighbour is good incentive to fight salinity, as Jill and Colin McGregor found out in the Yarra Yarra catchment, 300 kilometres north of Perth, where rising groundwater recharge and erosion are constant companions.
Jill and Colin run 2,000 hectares with 500 cattle on a farm that borders a 50 kilometre lake system, Mongers Lake, which is so salty that 'to wade in it with an open wound would be agony'.
"It sounds like we're in the middle of nowhere," Jill said. "Some get horrified by it but it is actually unique.
"There are native plants like Sandalwood and Quondong, beautiful wildflowers and wildlife and after the 1999 floods we saw rare waterfowls."
Funding
In a bid to protect this beauty Jill and Colin used more than $18,000 from the Australian Government to build 15.5 kilometres of fencing to help protect replanted areas and to stabilise groundwater recharge and erosion.
Activities
"This has encouraged plant growth by excluding stock from the area while allowing us to continue farming in the surrounding area," Jill said. "The floods in 1999 did a lot of damage because the water ran from higher up in the landscape to the bottom of our farm and out into the salt system. It was carving tracks and ditches right through our farm.
"On the flats we were getting water logging so we've planted a heap of salt bush in alleys so we can crop in between it, which has alleviated waterlogging. There are also areas we've planted and fenced off so we have natural bushline from the lake system and tracks of land available for wildlife. All up, 107,000 seedlings were planted."
Jill and Colin also built shallow waterway grade banks to channel the water in the right direction. The run-off still ends up in the lake system, but instead is a controlled flow to the natural contour of the land and only carves up one area of the precious farmland.
"It's changed the look of the farm," Jill said. "We had farmers from Queensland come out to see what we were doing and they were interested in the saltbush and vegetation and cattle and were quite excited. They saw they could use it for their own properties.
"To give growers the opportunity - not just conservationists - growers who are environmentally-minded, it's given them a chance to implement changes on their own farms. It's hard with budgets these days to allocate a portion to conservation - most farmers try - and I know we had to match this in funding, but it made it affordable."
More information
- Jill and Colin McGregor: (08) 9664 5013 or cjmcgrego@bigpond.com
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