Fairfax Landcare Community Group Award
The Fairfax Landcare Community Group Award celebrates an outstanding community group that is working towards sustainable land use or is undertaking on-ground action to protect, enhance or restore an area on behalf of the community.
Ginninderra Catchment Group, ACT
Ginninderra Catchment Group (GCG) is a community-based, natural resource management organisation with more than 20 years’ experience coordinating community environmental management in the north-west ACT Region.
As a Landcare network, GCG supports 16 Landcare groups including Parkcare, Urban, Rural, Junior and Aboriginal Landcare.
GCG also coordinates citizen science and community education programs, including the ACT and Region Frogwatch Program and Ginninderra Waterwatch.
FROGS Landcare, NSW
Friends and Residents of Goulburn Swamplands (FROGS) Landcare Group is an inspirational group of volunteers.
Together they are transforming an abandoned brick pit in the Goulburn CBD – once full of rubbish, pests and weeds – into a beautiful, functioning, natural storm water treatment system: the Goulburn Wetlands.
This regional development initiative of the Goulburn Group now acts as a natural water collection and filtration site for local storm water, returning it to the Mulwarree Ponds River with improved water quality for the Sydney Water Catchment.
Land for Wildlife and Garden for Wildlife, NT
Land for Wildlife and Garden for Wildlife Central Australia engages with landholders in urban Alice Springs and surrounding peri-urban, Aboriginal lands and rural properties.
Their goal is to help landholders work towards biodiversity conservation by providing information resources, expert advice, encouragement and on-going support.
The organisation also engages the general public about nature conservation, restoration and land management issues by hosting workshops and attending community events.
They also manage the Northern Territory Register of Significant Trees.
Noosa & District Landcare Group, QLD
Noosa & District Landcare Group has a focus on six key issues within its geographic location, pulling together innovative science, planning, and people, to help drive its programs.
Some of their many programs include; leading a local cutting-edge bioacoustics recording survey to try to find Australia’s most elusive bird, auditing aquatic biopassage impediments of government-owned infrastructure, propagation trials for local plants listed in the Environment and Biodiversity Conservation Act, and facilitating lidar imagery analysis to hone in on priority erosion remediation sites.
BirdLife Australia Gluepot Reserve, SA
BirdLife is Australia’s largest community-managed and operated conservation reserve.
Situated 64 kilometres from the River Murray in South Australia’s Riverland, the reserve is managed and operated entirely by volunteers.
BirdLife has successfully combined elements of biodiversity conservation and enhancement through land management, scientific research and monitoring, environmental education, and sustainable ecotourism. In this way, the group has taken conservation management into a new era, providing an international model of sustainable use of the landscape.
Tamar Island Wetland CARes Volunteer Group, TAS
Tamar Island Wetland CARes Volunteer Group has been operating the Tamar Island Wetlands Centre in Riverside since it opened in November 2000.
The 26 members of the volunteer group primarily provide visitor and educational information, focusing on a range of environmental topics including; wetlands ecology, wetlands fauna and flora, and the pest fish gambusia holbrooki.
The group provides more than 5500 volunteer hours annually and welcomes over 38,000 visitors a year to the centre.
Tarrangower Cactus Control Group, VIC
Over the last decade, volunteers from the Tarrangower Cactus Control Group (TCCG) have formed an army of ‘Cactus Warriors’.
These warriors have destroyed millions of wheel cactus plants in the local area, including many historic gold mining sites.
Wheel cactus is an extremely resilient plant and is difficult to destroy due to its thick, waxy skin.
TCCG members have spent years researching different techniques to eradicate the plant and have developed a specific injection tool which effectively delivers herbicide directly into the plant.
Moore Catchment Council, WA
Moore Catchment Council (MCC) is a community-led, not-for-profit organisation set up in 1995 to maintain and improve the health of the Moore River.
Promoting natural resource management and encouraging sustainable use of resources, MCC work at a grassroots level to maintain and repair the Moore’s natural environment.
MCC encourages sustainable farming and land management practices, and builds community interest in conserving the Moore River catchment against current and impending threats.
