Five year partnership delivers the goods
Our region, the Murraylands and Riverland, is highly diverse with many important and iconic landscapes. It takes a lot of effort to maintain and look after these landscapes.
Some of them need significant help to recover from the impacts of past land uses, pest and weeds, and environmental decline. Others need careful management to ensure that they can continue to support our livelihoods and lifestyles.
Over the past 5 years, the MR Landscape Board and the Australian Government have formed a strong partnership, with funding from National Landcare program, to deliver several projects that have made a big difference to this region.
Projects focussed on threatened mallee birds and the irongrass natural temperate grasslands have protected threatened ecosystems and their inhabitants. These projects have improved our knowledge about the distribution of important flora and fauna species and reduced the harmful threats that have caused their decline. Significant effort has been made to restore or improve the quality of critical habitat.
Another conservation project has concentrated on protecting 3 nationally important Ramsar wetlands found in the Riverland, at Banrock Station, and the Coorong and Lakes Alexandrina and Albert. These wetlands were severely impacted by the Millenium drought and are still recovering.
Work has been conducted to restore these habitats to their former glory, improving the chances for survival of threatened species like the southern bell frog and the Murray hardyhead fish.
The sustainable agriculture project has helped our farmers become more environmentally sustainable while increasing their productivity. It has increased farmers’ skills and knowledge, and given them the confidence to change or modify farming practices and protect the natural resources of their farms.
NLP investment from the Australian Government has resulted in some amazing outcomes as the landscape board has worked together with the community, First Nations, industry groups, conservation groups and local government to deliver these projects.
People are at the heart of managing our landscapes, and it is only by working together that we can ensure that our region continues to have the healthy natural and productive landscapes we love.
These projects are supported by the Murraylands and Riverland Landscape Board through funding from the Australian Government’s National Landcare Program and the landscape levies.
