Landcare NT Tours the Top End – May 2021
As the peak body for community Landcare in the Northern Territory, an important part of the organisations role is to represent, strengthen, support and grow the Northern Territory’s community Landcare movement. Landcare NT recently spent four days visiting with member groups and project partners in the Greater Darwin area. Madonna Wuttke (Executive Officer) and Sheree Bowman (Support Officer) had the opportunity to learn more about the work groups are doing, their achievements and challenges.
Visiting sites across the Top end reinforced the role of Landcare NT and the importance of having a territory body to advocate for community Landcare groups and volunteers on the ground. Mathias Paul from the Friends of East Point showed Madonna and Sheree how they have been rebuilding native habitat at East Point Reserve through active and challenging revegetation and targeted weed control. One of the challenges this group has had to overcome is having access to water at East Point Reserve to water revegetation. Fire is also an ongoing issue for many peri-urban groups like the Friends of East Point, where arson threatens the valuable revegetation work that has been undertaken by volunteers.
Landcare NT connects groups like the Friends of East Point and the Casuarina Coastal Reserve Landcare Group with funding and partnership opportunities, where they can access support to do great work in their communities and overcome challenges on their project sites.
Casuarina Coastal Reserve Landcare Group is a passionate group of volunteers and like many groups in the Greater Darwin Area, they have regular working bees where local community can get involved. When Madonna and Sheree toured the sites, it was easy to see the results of the hard work that has gone into the maintenance of the areas, with successful revegetation and weed control playing an important part in habitat restoration. With some technical guidance, the group are making good headway to creating habitat for the Atlas Moth.
Recently Landcare NT facilitated the opportunity for the Casuarina Coastal Reserve Landcare Group to present at the Society of Ecological Restoration Conference in Darwin. At this conference, groups were able to communicate with attendees about how their work is contributing to ecosystem restoration on a local scale and why Landcare in the NT needs to be better supported with appropriate funding. Landcare NT will continue to assist these volunteer groups by advocating on their behalf and providing opportunities to showcase their work on the national stage through its membership of the National Landcare Network.
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