Celebrating Regenerative Agriculture | Sea Spurge Biocontrol Agent | World Wetlands Day | March4Earth | + more
Teach em' how to fish
What's the saying? Give a person a fish and you feed them for a day, teach them how to fish and you feed them for a lifetime?
Landcare Tasmania's Outreach Program aims to teach you all to fish! Well, we're actually teaching other things like native seed collection and regenerative agriculture... but the point is, Landcarers are equipped to do it themselves.
The first training events of the year have kicked off, and they have been sold out and successful.
Image: ©Yasmin Mund
The Seed Collection and Propagation workshop with Ruth Mollison from Island Seeds was a hit, as always. Workshop go-ers meandered through a beautiful native garden and learnt how to collect, store and propagate native seeds.
These workshops help build capacity and resilience in our local communities and equip Landcarers with skills to go home and collect and propagate their own local provenance seeds.
Read more about the day and view the beautiful photo gallery (thanks to volunteer photographer Yasmin Mund!).
Image: © Rachael Treasure
Landcare Tasmania supported two of our powerhouse member groups Regenerative Agriculture Network Tasmania (RANT) and Ripple Farm to host a fantastic experiential workshop on the crossover between dung beetles and regenerative agriculture.
It was one event packed to the brim with three highly informative workshops from the experts: Andrew Doube on dung beetles, Celia Leverton on regenerative agriculture and Daniel Loré and Rachael Treasure on holistic grazing.
Regenerative agriculture has begun to transform the soils on Ripple Farm. Healthy dung beetle populations and rotational grazing support each other as two parts of restoring and maintaining vibrant soil heath!
Thanks to all who came along, those who shared their wisdom, and the amazing organisation of this event. The catering was outstanding and the 'Dung-balls' were a favourite!
Events like these empower Landcarers by providing them with resilience-building skills in our changing environment.
Check out the full story and photo gallery!
Register for Training
Do you want to be notified of training opportunities as soon as they arise? Register your interest below.
These workshop are part of our Outreach Program which aims to increase capacity for Landcarers so that all our land and coasts can be cared for by the community. Funded by: The Tasmanian Government Landcare Action Grants and donations to the Tasmanian Landcare Fund by the JM Roberts Charitable Trust.
These workshops support our Landscape Restoration Program, which aims to bring together several members working on common issues, to gain a greater long-term benefit at a landscape scale.
Celebrating Regenerative Agriculture
We celebrated our love for the land on National Regenerative Agriculture Day. Check out what some of our awesome members are doing in the Regenerative Agriculture space, and learn a bit too!
What are the 5 key principles of regenerative agriculture? How do we mimic nature through holistic management? And what do wolves have to do with anything?
Get stuck into the regen ag special below featuring videos, articles and podcasts from our groups. We've got Celia Leverton taking us on a tour of her farm, Rachael Treasure hosting regen ag events at Ripple Farm, Theresa Chapman in a podcast chatting Soil Carbon, Tim Reed's award-winning innovations, Tas Ag Co talking on the New Soil Carbon Method, and more!
This features as part of our Advocacy work, to raise the profile and get better support for Community Landcare in Tasmania.
Our Member Admin services include sharing member stories, events and calls to action. Would you like us to share your story? Get in touch.
First Release of Sea Spurge Biocontrol Agent
Sea spurge (Euphorbia paralias) is a highly invasive weed - with some of the most severe infestations occurring in Tasmania. It outcompetes native and threatened coastal plant species, stops native and migratory shore birds from nesting successfully, alters sand movement creating steeper dunes, and releases a latex that can cause skin and eye irritation to humans and pets - not fun on the beach!
None of this is good. So what can we do to purge the spurge?
The first releases of a biocontrol agent are underway in south-east Australia with hopes that the fungus, known as Venturia paralias, will reduce the spread and impact of sea spurge.
King Island Landcare Group are one of the first community groups to begin utilising the biocontrol agent, with Dr. Gavin Hunter, the CSIRO research scientist managing this project, guiding them through the release.
Landcare Tasmania played an important networking role in the delivery of this project to its members across Tasmania. This project is hoping to see a substantial improvement for biodiversity with the progressive reduction of the number of beaches impacted by sea spurge - yay for the recovery of native habitats, nesting birds and native flora and fauna.
Read more about the release of the sea spurge biocontrol agent, and watch Dr. Gavin Hunter speak about the deployment of the biocontrol agent.
This features as part of our Advocacy work, to raise the profile and get better support for Community Landcare in Tasmania.
Our Member Admin services include sharing member stories, events and calls to action. Would you like us to share your story? Get in touch.
World Wetlands Day Bonanza with Kingston Beach Coastcare
© Waiwun Wang
The Kingborough Council municipality has over 20 active Landcare groups which have been supported through a longterm partnership between Landcare Tasmania and Kingborough Council.
To celebrate World Wetlands Day 2022, Kingston Beach Coastcare Group (KBCG) and Conservation Volunteers Australia (CVA) got together to weed the far end of the promenalinah/Browns River Saltmarsh.
The target area was extremely weedy due to the heavy rains experienced last year and the months that had elapsed since the KBCG's last visit in August 2021.
The weeds were practically strangling the hundreds of native plantings from KBCG working bees in the winters of 2020 and 2021. However, the many volunteers present on the day managed to weed the entire target area in just two hours.
It is estimated that about 200kg of mature seedy weeds (blackberries, monster mallow, Californian poppy, plantain, etc) in and around the plantings were removed and dispatched.
Thanks to all the volunteers who worked hard at this fabulous working bee, celebrating the value of wetlands!
Our Member Admin services include sharing member stories, events and calls to action. Would you like us to share your story? Get in touch.
March4Earth
This March Landcare Tasmania are excited to jump on board as a March4Earth champion.
March4Earth was founded in lutruwita/ Tassie in 2019 by "a few chicks who were passionately concerned about climate change."
Headed by the Zombie mascot 'Brainz', the campaign aims to bring attention to our 'Zombie-like state' when it comes to climate change. That is, a lack of awareness (or mindlessly ignoring the state of the planet), or disengaging due to misinformation or 'doom and gloom' messaging.
From which March4Earth was born, aiming to use humour, education and opportunities for action to drive social change.
"Brainz was rolling in their grave about the state of the planet and has risen up to learn about sustainability. Now they want to teach us too!"
How it works:
1. Sign up and pick your actions to reduce your carbon footprint for 31 days (they've made a handy list for you)
2. Raise some money for environmental organisations (including us)
3. and take action!
"Everything we do from the food we eat to the products we buy to the way we travel, releases greenhouse gases like giant, hot farts that impact out planet in a not-so-awesome way."
"Our aim is for Aussies to make sustainable choices everyday - both big and small"
Why not pledge to take some action for climate this March and raise some dosh for the planet?
Donate
A huge thank you to this month's donors! This month, Knocklofty Spirits, Red Parka and Keep Tassie Wild have made generous donations for important Landcare projects across the state.
These much-needed donations are supporting island restoration, penguin rehabilitation and have helped us make a killer submission for the National Review on gen2 Rodenticides .
More projects need support, can you help by making a donation to the Tasmanian Landcare Fund?
As a small not-for-profit organisation supporting over 300 Landcare Groups we rely on donations to our registered charity, the Tasmanian Landcare Fund, to support our programs and projects across Tasmania. These include landscape restoration projects, our education program, community outreach events and support for our members and their projects.
We would love to support as many projects as possible. Can you or someone you know make a donation?
The Project Bank
Is your future project in the project bank? Don't miss out because we are gearing up for the next exciting landscape-scale project and general funding round, bringing together and supporting Landcare projects in our Project Bank.
Have you got a Landcare project that needs support, or could fit into a catchment-wide project? Become a member and submit an expression of interest into the project bank today.
The Project Bank Map, Expressions of Interest
This project is part of our Landscape Restoration Program, which aims to bring together several members working on common issues, to gain a greater long-term benefit at a landscape scale.
Thanks for reading
The Landcare Tasmania Team
Peter Stronach - Chief Executive Officer
Priscilla Richards - Landcare Services Manager
Rachel Larner - Finance and Administration Manager
Jenn Gason – Communications Manager
Jakob Sprickerhof – Project Manager
Evie Drinnan - Executive Assistant
Joy Pfleger – Project Officer
