Executive officer joins team to strengthen statewide landscape efforts

It was advertised as a new role and an incredible opportunity for the right person to make a positive difference for South Australia's land, water and nature – a senior role supporting general managers and board chairs and developing relationships at a regional, state and national level.

Kate Forrest answered the call and in early April joined South Australia’s landscape boards as Executive Officer, Landscape SA.

We asked her to tell us about herself and her new role:

Tell us a little bit about your career so far, and what brought you to landscape boards?

I began in Primary Industries in Port Augusta working in property management planning in the rangelands. I was attracted to this because it was an integrated whole of farm approach that was based on how people make decisions.

This set the basis for my career. I was able to apply what I had learnt about planning and facilitation to a range of environments and audiences across Australia and a couple of stints overseas.

I have worked in and around NRM since before it structurally existed.

A decade spent coordinating the Rangeland NRM Alliance developed my skills in managing groups of varied members attempting to work together, often in their spare time on low resources, to achieve a collective greater good.

So, I guess it is that experience that has brought me (back) to the landscape boards.

 This is a newly created role - how would you explain its purpose?

Because it’s a new role we can make it what it needs to be, but it also means that it might be a little bit messy as we settle the position and what it does.

I would describe the purpose of the role as supplying arms and legs for the landscape boards at the state level. It also creates the opportunity to provide some ease for the landscape boards and for the agencies and partners by having a central point of contact and allowing the landscape boards to have a representation in forums.

 What will you be focusing on first in your role as Executive Officer?

I will be meeting people, learning the issues affecting the landscape boards in SA and helping to set up the way that this role is best positioned to assist the boards to achieve what they are aiming for at a state level.

There are a lot of moving parts. I’m trying to develop a picture of all these and start to bring the many parts together, it will take me a while.

What’s happening in natural resource management right now that you find exciting or important?

Here are just a few things:

• the opportunity that technology offers through its ability to give us eyes and ears in many more places that we can physically be in at once – giving real time information and allowing for targeted activities

• the increasing recognition of the importance of nature to systems – which may have been ignored in the past – such as the inclusion of environmental reporting in business reporting, decarbonisation and Net Zero targets, and the recognition of circular economies and how they offer ways to make accounting for nature mainstream

• accelerating the work to develop and restore functional ecosystems, to get them to a condition where they can do the job we ask of them whether that be supporting biodiversity, supporting water resources, or supporting agricultural production. I think this is increasingly important and urgent in the changing climate and its ensuing disasters, the fast and the slow.  I think there is increasing recognition that the world needs nature and should be paying for it.

What's one piece of advice that’s stuck with you throughout your career?

Keep the end in mind. This allows you to know where you’re heading but also be adaptive in the way you get there.

And finally — when you're not at work, what do you love to do?

Outside of work I like to have adventures including travel, hiking, bike riding, food and wine, shack renovations and repairs, gardening and dogs!

Contact Kate

Kate is hosted by the SA Arid Lands Landscape Board, based in Waymouth St, Adelaide. She can be contacted at kate.forrest@sa.gov.au Monday to Thursday.