The closing date for applications to join the Rural Landholder Initiative project is looming and rural property owners are encouraged to apply for funds to help improve their land.
The Rural Landholder Initiative assists landholders through education and incentives and is a key part of Lismore City Council’s Biodiversity Management Strategy.
The initiative is a rural landholder capacity-building project that involves educational opportunities such as field days and the use of free resources as well as incentives such as an annual small grants program.
The Rural Landholder Initiative was co-designed with Southern Cross University and works with landholders to restore and enhance biodiversity assets on private land.
Providing small grants
The Rural Landholder Initiative, which is now in its sixth year, provides small grants to landowners to improve the biodiversity and farm productivity on their land.
Assistance of up to $7,500 is available which can give support with professional advice, labour, and materials provided over two years with projects to commence in July 2022.
Landholders can apply for funds to help with the following projects:
- Bush regeneration works restoring areas of native habitat or
- Revegetation with local native plants
- Environmental weed control and initial follow-up maintenance
- Plantings for erosion stabilisation using local native plants
- Purchasing fencing materials to control livestock in riparian and wetland areas, and remnant vegetation improvement
- Purchasing off-stream watering equipment to protect waterways from stock impact
- Stabilising stock crossing points
A successful past
Some of the previous funds went to enriching biodiversity at Repentance Creek with 17 hectares of Camphor-dominated growth are being assisted to transform areas back into richly beautiful riparian rainforest.
Another project saw the planting of 800 trees to improve water quality entering the Wilsons River to control erosion, hold water in the paddocks and reduce drying winds which also provides habitat for local fauna, and another project has restored 2.5 hectares of native rainforest along a creek by removing weeds and planting 280 endemic species to stop erosion.
Information for rural landholders
Lismore Council’s online Interactive Mapping Service may assist you to find out environmental information about your property.
Council has produced a range of booklets (available on Council’s website) on the major environmental issues for five land-use types in our region: beef graziers, dairy farmers, orchardists, floodplain croppers and rural ‘lifestyle’ landholders.
The booklets offer ideas for improving land and waterway management practices for biodiversity and include a Farm Health Assessment Tool so that landholders can self-assess their practices.
Projects in 2022
Expressions of interest for funding through the Rural Landholder Initiative are open until Friday, December 17, 2021. Information on the latest funding round for 2022 projects and the guidelines on grant funding is available here.
If you would like more information about the round 9 funding for 2022 projects, please contact our Rural Landholder Initiative Extension Officer Kate Steel on 6625 0500.
