Above: Greening Australia CEO Jonathan Duddles, Project Manager Mike Noble and Community Program Manager, Sebastian Burgess.

Greening Australia’s work with farmers in the northern part of Tasmania has been rewarded with a Tasmanian Water Environment Merit Award.  The award is one of the key awards from the Tasmanian Branch of the Australia Water Association and recognises public or private organisations that value water as an essential and highly valued resource.

His Excellency the Honourable William Cox AC RFD presented the award at a gala event held at Laetere Gardens in Moonah.

Jonathan Duddles, the CEO of Greening Australia in Tasmania said he was incredibly proud to be involved with the project.  “The commitment of farmers to the project has been incredible.  It again shows that investing in our natural infrastructure benefits not only the environment, but the people in that environment.”

Above: Peter McIntosh, from Brook Eden, and Project Officer Mike Noble

The project encouraged farmers to fence off waterways on their properties to limit stock access to the waterway; and to revegetate the protected areas. 

$450 000 of commonwealth NHT funding, provided through NRM North, was leveraged to provide over $1 million dollars of labour and materials to achieve:

• 100 km of streamside fencing, 24 instream engineering works, 149 stock watering points in the Nile, Macquarie, Meander, Pipers, North Esk and South Esk River catchments
• 12 ha of willow and weed control
• habitat protection for threatened species such as the Giant Freshwater Lobster and the Mt Arthur Burrowing Crayfish
• Protection of water supply catchments
• Restoration of RAMSAR listed Rushy Lagoon
• Protection of 7 acres of rare Swamp gum woodland.

Ross Bennett, a landholder from the upper Second River said:  “The value added by completing the project has been to ensure that the river running through our property, and the delicate wetlands situated directly beside the river, are now preserved as an environmentally secure water catchment area and a dedicated wildlife reserve in our part of Northern Tasmania.   By communicating the value to other farmers in the area, we have now ensured that a riparian strip will be in place on all grazing farmland upstream from our property to the head of the Second River, which starts on Mount Arthur.”

The project deployed over a million dollars worth of labour and materials to implement practical solutions to these problems across 98 strategically chosen sites on 81 landholdings. Typical grants to the farmers were in the order of $5000 - $10 000, and farmers contributed substantially through their labour and other materials.  The Natural Heritage Trust, through NRM North, provided initial project funding.