Increasing biodiversity and climate resilience
Mulloon Creek, NSW.
The Guardian, 11 November 2022
Meet the farmers and landowners working to increase biodiversity and climate resilience on their land.
Australia is a country heavily affected by biodiversity loss, but a group of landholders and managers is aiming to build climate resilience to restore and protect flora and fauna.
Australia’s latest State of the Environment Report notes that more than 1,900 Australian species and ecological communities are known to be threatened or at risk of extinction, and at least 19 ecosystems across the continent have been reported to be showing signs of collapse. But it argues that environmental impacts can be managed, especially with greater investment for the protection of Australia’s threatened species, and more engagement with communities.
The Mulloon Rehydration Initiative is making a difference, via a group of landholders and managers who are rehydrating landscapes. It began as one man’s vision to improve the ecology of the creek on his property, and to rebuild hydration into the landscape.
Tony Coote AM. [Photo: Canberra Region Joint Organisation / Adam McGrath]
Expanding his mission across the greater catchment, the late Tony Coote AM built partnerships with his neighbours. Together they set about improving the Mulloon Creek system, and its tributaries, in the New South Wales’ Southern Tablelands, incorporating a variety of methods to hold water within the landscape. As well as the land, the project has improved the habitat of frogs, fish and other aquatic species, invertebrates and birds. Progress that’s monitored here.
The Mulloon Institute is part of the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network. The 23 property owners in the Mulloon Creek catchment have changed landscape practices to help protect 23,000 hectares and 50km of waterways.
Rehydrating strategies in action
Gerry Carroll and Robyn Clarey became Coote’s neighbours in 1998 when they bought a beef farm next to his property. They quickly recognised that drought was their biggest challenge.
“We wanted to bank water into the soil,” Carroll says. “Tony helped us recognise we can fix our farm but the response to building climate resilience needs to be catchment-wide.”
Mulloon Creek and a tributary of Ratall Creek run through their property. “We came to believe Ratall Creek was no longer a permanent creek because of the surrounding damage to other waterways, including Mulloon Creek,” Carroll says.
Over time, slowing and holding up the egress of water across the landscape has resulted in a series of billabongs being rehydrated, soil fertility and organic matter improving, and Ratall Creek re-emerging.
Where Carroll and Clarey identified natural soaks and springs in the landscape, a series of sunken channels, or swales, were built across paddocks, following contour lines. The swales helped radically slow rainwater in its movement across the land, enabling it to spread across and soak into the soil. They also double as small dams. Fencing was erected following these contours that enabled revegetation corridors to be planted and further protect the surrounding land from livestock and vehicle compaction of the soil.
Positive impact on wildlife
The strategies put in place have already had an impact on wildlife, including the scarlet robin, classified as vulnerable in New South Wales because of wide-scale habitat loss. According to environment NSW, 28% of the species' occurs on reserve (within NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service estate) and the remaining 72% on private land.
“The scarlet robin was a small population in a forest on our farm but had to traverse open land to get to water,” Carroll says. “We set aside some of our land to create a vegetation corridor and rehabilitated forested country, linking the forest to the creek.” This corridor protects the robin from predators, giving it safe access to the creek.
“Every bit of biodiversity adds some resilience to the land.”
Gerry Carroll
After the rebuilding of vegetation corridors, Carroll and Clarey’s land is now included in the Mulloon Institute’s catchment-wide surveys of aquatic and terrestrial life. These surveys have demonstrated increased populations of mountain galaxias fish in the lower Mulloon Creek, and greater diversity and increased numbers of six species of frogs. Eleven species of frogs were recorded in the 2021 survey.
Bird surveys since 2015 have shown increased sightings of species including flame and scarlet robins (both classified as a threatened species) and red-capped robins (rare), as vegetation composition and connectivity has improved.
During the drought years of 2007-2010, aquatic and terrestrial plants continued to thrive along the rehydrated riparian zone and in billabongs and waterways. When the drought broke with two significant floods, the plants reduced flow rates and erosion, and the aquatic plants provided a filtering system for the lower catchment, as well as protection for fish and invertebrates.
Rehydration efforts on Gerry Carroll and Robyn Clarey’s property, March 2018 to March 2020.
Resilience at scale
Carolyn Hall, the CEO and managing director of the Mulloon Institute, says: “We recognised further expansion of the Mulloon Rehydration Initiative - to restore hydrological function and manage how water moves through the landscape - requires funding that goes beyond government.
“It requires partners that understand catchment projects at their core are social projects, and the goals and aspirations of landholders and production for agriculture.”
Plant milk manufacturer Vitasoy was looking for a community partner to work with on a national scale. It selected the Mulloon Institute.
David Tyack, the managing director of Vitasoy Australia Products, says the corporation has a vested interest in ensuring sustainable farming and land management is normal practice for its producers across Australia.
“Our consumers expect brands to be sustainable, particularly in light of climate extremes,” he says. “We also have a social and environmental responsibility to our suppliers.”
Tyack says the brand aims to buy its raw materials from Australian farmers, rather than import them. “We believe in supporting Aussie farmers and actively pursue an Australian-first sourcing policy, meaning that if we can source our raw ingredients from Australian farmers, we always do.”
Rehydration efforts at the Institute’s Home Farm location, June 2006 to May 2011.
According to Tyack: “Recent years have seen Australia ravaged by climatic extremes, both drought and flood, which has resulted in Vitasoy having to source a small proportion of our organic soybeans from overseas to ensure that we can meet market demands.” In practice this meant 29% in 2020-21 due to drought (11% USA and 18% Canada). None in 2021-22 due to good conditions and 15% from the USA in 2022-23 due to floods in New South Wales and Queensland.
“We prioritise reverting back to Australian-grown ingredients as soon as conditions allow and are resolute in our ongoing commitment to Australian manufacturing and farming.”
Tyack says Vitasoy Australia has made a $1.25m pledge to the Mulloon Institute to help rehydrate Australian catchments, across the nation, over the next five years.
“We believe this will help them to scale their work and create a national conversation about sustainable land management. We hope this type of corporate leadership will inspire contributions from other Australian food producers.”
* The Mulloon Rehydration Initiative is jointly funded through the Mulloon Institute and the Australian Government’s National Landcare Program, with assistance from the NSW Government’s Environmental Trust.