News and Events

And on the Forbes front – I hope that you have all checked out the lovely new trees planted on the entrance to Forbes as part of the 150^th Anniversary of local government celebrations. I have glimpsed local Landcare legend Len Reade on site, planting, watering and doing some general maintenance.Great work Forbes Urban and Forbes Shire!

This week I wanted to spend a bit more time on planning your project. Its sounding like March will be the time when the Community Action Grants resurface, so getting your ideas together now will be of great advantage. I haven’t heard if these grants will operate on the same basis as last time, but they are usually for projects of up to $20,000 and projects need to be completed within around twelve months. This lends itself to tree planning, training, erosion control, native grasses projects and the like – that can be short and sharp and cleaned up quickly.

One of the other important things that you need to do when planning a successful project is to link in with the work of other partners. I mentioned this last week, but thought a bit more detail might be required. There are many players in natural resource management these days – both private and public, profit and not for profit.

At the very obvious level are the Catchment Management Authorities. In your project planning you will need to make sure that you do some research into what the CMA priorities are for your project area. You can find out about these from the Catchment Action Plan for your catchment – which you can find online or get a copy from your local CMA office. The CMA’s are a key player in natural resource management – though the “regional model” – and you ignore them at the peril of your project.

One of the other important partners to consider is other Landcare networks. Here we have some great ones close to us – Little River being a classic example. This network has worked on some great projects – and some very innovative ones. It would be worth checking out their website for ideas and to see if they have worked on a project similar to the one that you would like to do, as Pip Job and the gang are very happy to share ideas assist. Their website is http://www.littleriver-landcare.org.au.

Other terrific networks adjacent to us are Condobolin Landcare and Central Tablelands. Both of these have great co-ordinators at the helm – at Condo we have Kate Kirk and in Orange we have Marita Sydes. Both have a wealth of experience especially in the education aspects of NRM – so if it’s a training or education project that you or your group are hoping to run, then these networks would be great ones to talk to.

Until next with – with more on project planning, wishing you happy Landcaring!