Capacity Building Workshop with Terrain NRM

In mid-August, Duncan from Terrain NRM and Mulloon Consulting’s Neil Cupples and Leon Van Wyk were out in the headwaters of the Upper Herbert River, far north QLD. They visited another large cattle station on the drier, western side of the Great Dividing Range – not too far from the majestic Blencoe Falls – delivering on-the-ground Landscape Rehydration capacity building.

Neil and Duncan inspecting an actively deepening gully with the landholder.

Being out in the field with the landholder affords a great deal more detail in the conversations about specific issues and how to resolve them through an understanding of the landscape. This article highlights some important details discussed during the workshop and provides inspiration for better understanding your own landscapes in terms of ecosystem function.

Cattle and irrigated cotton crop.

First, we unpack landscape rehydration, which aims to “restore the movement, storage and cycling of water through our landscape” (Mulloon Institute, 2023). Whether grazing rangelands or annual pastures, dryland cropping or irrigated horticulture, landscape rehydration can deliver benefits to biodiversity and perform extra ecosystem services via improving plant photosynthesis. This station in the monsoonal tropics has a mixed enterprise with irrigated and dryland cropping (cotton, as at the time of our workshop) supplementing the extensive cattle business.

Next, we consider prioritising your goals. Because some systems degrade very rapidly it can make good financial sense to focus on the areas that are vulnerable but not yet completely compromised. Whereas attempting to ‘solve’ big issues can be very expensive and is inherently risky. Development regulations complicate the process further because you need to understand both the physical and legal context of your landscape rehydration project.

Once you know what your goals are, ‘reading’ the landscape is a good way to see how on-site and off-site factors can impact the overall scale of issues and opportunities. Sometimes, though remote sensing and mapping is the best first step to help you prioritise where to begin (and challenge how you see the situation… ie. “the problem is the solution” legacy of Bill Mollison, the late great permaculture co-originator).

Gully head and cotton cropping.

Landscape rehydration is a long-term process. Whether it’s a large station or a small back block, landscape rehydration is best applied as a ‘whole system’ approach. Therefore, you want a clear idea of exactly where your project boundaries are and keep your energies focussed rather than spread too thin. Often, starting with your roads/tracks/paths is the best way to make positive and noticeable change that can teach you a huge amount through paying attention in small yet regular doses of observation. This is even more important when roadways are concentrating rainfall and runoff, creating major erosion hotspots and potentially threatening your infrastructure and/or investments.

Here in Queensland, we have some regulations that protect waterways of certain sizes (stream order) from development that could impact fish passage. This is a good example of regulatory considerations that could impact your plans for landscape rehydration. If you live in QLD, it is easy to check the QLD Globe web portal to see the fish passage risk (and different regulation) levels that may apply to waterways on your property. If you need help with identifying these resources or would like to learn more, don’t hesitate to get in touch with the Mulloon Institute via email or follow us on the socials.

Active gully advancing uphill through clay subsoils.

This workshop was part of Terrain NRM’s Upper Herbert Sediment Reduction Project. It is funded by the partnership between the Australian Government’s Reef Trust and the Great Barrier Reef Foundation.