NSPNR receives funding for new project Classroom to Paddock: Enriching NSP Culture & Biodiversity

NSPNR has been successful in obtaining full funding of $445,519 for our recent Community Stewardship Grant - large application ‘Classroom to Paddock: Enriching NSP Culture and Biodiversity’

The Classroom to Paddock Project promotes cultural connections and environmental stewardship among the three local schools and landholders in the North Stirlings Pallinup sub-region of WA. The project maintains momentum of current State NRM projects, a gap in funding would be detrimental to progress:

1) Capitalising on landholder’s increased willingness to participate in collaborative revegetation and protective fencing projects: - Addressing ecological damage from land clearing - Improving soils, waterways, threatened species habitat & corridors with high quality native revegetation

2) Fostering Gnowangerup Aboriginal Corporation partnership: - Sharing cultural knowledge - Seed collection services

3) Immersive school programs encouraging environmental and cultural awareness.

This project will run January 2025 - December 2027

NSPNR thanks State NRM for supporting this project

NSPNR receives funding for 20-year project review

The project, NSPNR Looking Back to Plan the Future, aims to improve strategic planning and evidence-based decision-making by North Stirlings Pallinup Natural Resources Inc by reviewing the organisation’s past projects to enhance the accessibility and usability of natural resource data. After digitization and consolidation of paper records and dispersed mapping files, a 20-year analysis of past projects will then be undertaken to inform strategic planning. This initiative will increase conservation impact by enabling better monitoring and management of natural resources, leading to more effective conservation strategies and outcomes. The project's success will be measured by enhanced accessibility to project data and a prioritized list of future activities.

The project will run January 2025 - February 2026.

NSPNR thanks State NRM for their support of the project.

New Chair for NSPNR

NSPNR welcomes Ciara Nalty to the role of Chair.

Ciara can be contacted on mob. 0450 102 344 or cmnalty@gmail.com

Ciara Nalty (right) pictured with her partner Brandon Wise at the NSPNR 2024 Annual General Meeting

NSPNR participates in Gnowangerup Hall Centenary celebration

NSPNR was pleased to take part in the celebrations marking the Gnowangerup Town Hall’s centenary at the Heritage Hall Fair on Sunday, 14th April. We were delighted to be involved and to showcase NSPNR’s mission of ‘promoting healthy and productive landscapes that support prosperous communities and businesses across our catchment area’ and we commend the organisers on a great community event.

At our stall, our project officer Laura Page displayed NSPNR’s cat trap, Eco Kids Party Pack, a pottiputki, a kidney basket, and various publications, including the NSPNR native planting guide and a flyer about our Expanded predator control program in the Fitz-Stirling Corridor project . We also exhibited a variety of native plants from the Gnowangerup Aboriginal Corporation’s nursery, such as pincushion hakeas, brown’s banksia, sweet hakea, and old man saltbush.

We received queries on topics including quondong trees, invasive species, protective vegetation fencing, tree planting, re-vegetation, and fox baiting, among other interesting subjects from members and local residents. We were pleased to welcome new members, particularly from the western area of our catchment, who joined both our organisation and our new WhatsApp group.

A big thank you to Laura for representing NSPNR, and for comittee members Bec and Peter for adding support.

Unearthing the impact of land use on deep soil carbon: a West Australian Wheatbelt example

 Dan recently completed a Masters of Ag Science at UWA, during which he did research on the impact of land use on soil carbon content and stability up to the depth of 1m on a Wheatbelt farm (the UWA farm in Ridgefield). Dan reached out to us to share his research and we here at NSPNR thought it was very topical and wanted to share! We hope you find Dan’s summary of his project interesting.

Unearthing the impact of land use on deep soil carbon: a West Australian Wheatbelt example

Dan Kierath

Key Points

·        Land management decisions can impact carbon content and stability in soil.

·        Soil carbon stability increases with depth and soil clay content.

·        Any decision to increase soil carbon is subject to farm-level meteorological, soil and financial constraints.

The topic of atmospheric carbon and its impacts can be highly contentious and promote strong reactions from both sides of the debate. But one point that cannot be argued is that all of Australia’s big four banks and Rabobank are all signatories to the Net Zero Banking alliance, which is a global banking agreement to have a lending portfolio with net zero emissions by 2050. This means that a farm’s carbon footprint may become a factor impacting access to, or the interest rates of, debt finance.

There is no silver bullet to reduce farm emissions, and this will require an industry-wide effort to achieve. One proposed method to mitigate farm emissions is changing the management practices to increase carbon storage in soil, which can have the additional benefit of improving soil health. Increasing soil carbon has a large sequestration potential globally but is highly dependent on local conditions and this research investigated the impacts of management decisions at the UWA farm in Pingelly, which has sandy and loamy duplex soils.

The content and stability of soil carbon were measured at 4 depth intervals to a depth of 100cm from paddocks with 4 land uses; annual grazing, perennial grazing, forage shrub (Mallee Saltbush) and Salinity Revegetation (Golden Wattle with grass interrow). The aim was to also include soil samples from a cropping paddock, but they had to be excluded due to issues with sample collection methodology.

The soil samples were analysed for organic carbon content and were incubated for 26 days to measure how stable the soil carbon is to microbial decomposition, with some of the key results shown in the figures below.

Figure 1 shows the soil Total Organic Carbon (TOC) content for each of the land uses, across the 4 depths (Depth 1 is 0-10cm, 2 is 10-30cm, 3 is 30-60cm and 4 is 60-100cm). As can be seen, the carbon content in the soil can be impacted by the management practices that occur on top of it. Furthermore, the content decreases as depth increases.

Figure 2 shows the stability of the soil carbon by sample depth and by land use. The higher up the y axis a data point is, the larger proportion of the carbon in the soil that was converted to CO2 by the soil microbes. Figure 2a shows that carbon in the shallower soil samples was less stable than deeper soil carbon, whilst Figure 2b shows that the soil carbon in the perennial grazing soil samples was the most resistant to microbial decomposition and the carbon in the salinity revegetation was the least resistant. Additionally, soil particle size analysis of the soil showed that carbon stability increases with higher clay content.

So how is this useful to you? Although the results would likely differ if the same research was conducted in the North Stirling Pallingup region, this research shows that farm-level decisions can impact soil carbon content and stability. This research does not necessarily support large scale farm management changes, rather it may inform the scale of opportunity available with soil carbon, which is only one part of a farm business’ carbon footprint. Increasing soil carbon may not be the most cost-effective method of decreasing a farm business’ emissions profile and for some, improvements to nitrogen use efficiency or flock genetics may be cheaper and have a larger impact and should be prioritised. The difficulty and impact of any decisions will vary for each farm business and should be made with input from farm advisers, considering to each farm’s production and financial factors.

Figure 1: Comparisons of the distribution of Total Organic Carbon by Land Use, by sample horizon. Length of error bars is equal to 1 standard deviation.

Figure 2: Comparison of CO2 respiration (mg CO2 per g of sample soil carbon) of TOC by time and depth (left), TOC by time and land use (right). The higher the value on the y-axis, the more of the soil carbon was respired by the soil microbes and converted to CO2.

I would like to thank GGA and WALRC for their support in this research.

This research was completed wholly as part of my Masters of Ag Science at UWA and is not associated in any way to my employment at Select Carbon.

Save the date -NSPNR and Yongergnow partner to hold Feral Animal Tally and Community Breakfast

NSPNR has partnered with Yongergnow Australian Malleefowl Centre to hold a Feral Animal Tally and Community Breakfast on Saturday 17 February 2024. Registered teams may start targeting foxes, feral cats and rabbits on private land in the Shire of Gnowangerup and Gnowellen and Broomehill East from 5pm the night before.

Team members are to arrive with their collection at either of two locations,  Ongerup Tip or Gnowangerup Tip, between 5.30am and 6am. Tally starts at 6am. Late entries will not be considered for the tally.

The event is part of NSPNR’s project, Expanded predator control program in the Fitz-Stirling Corridor, that aims to reduce the number of feral cats, foxes and rabbits in the area between the Stirling Range and Fitzgerald River national parks. This will reduce pressure on native animals including malleefowl, chuditch and Carnaby’s black cockatoo. This project is supported by funding from the Western Australian Government’s State NRM Program.

Foxes, cats and other invasive fauna have a devastating impact on the numbers and biodiversity of wildlife species in the North Stirlings - Pallinup sub-region and across the country. In Australia, cats and foxes were found to collectively kill more than 1.4 billion mammals, almost 700 million reptiles and around 510 million birds each year.

Foxes are estimated to cost Australian farmers $35 million dollars annually throughout lambing periods. Toxoplasmosis is a parasite that can be transferred from feral cats to pregnant ewes, potentially causing embryonic fatalities and miscarriages. Rabbits cause an estimated $600 million worth of damage to Australian agriculture each year.

Teams can register for the NSPNR - Yongergnow Feral Animal Tally and Community Breakfast by signing up at https://yongergnow.com.au/centre/ by 5pm on Wed 14 February.

Community members are warmly invited to attend the breakfast from 6.30am (Yongergnow Centre or Soul Van opposite Gnowangerup Post Office) to hear the results of the tally. RSVP indicating Ongerup or Gnowangerup and number of people by Wed 14 February to visitor@yongergnow.com.au or call 9828 2325.

The tally and community breakfast would not be possible without the support of our partners: State NRM, South Coast NRM, the Shire of Gnowangerup, Yongergnow-Ongerup CRC, FRRR, Bush Heritage Australia, Elders, Farmers Centre 1978, Gnowangerup Hardware, Stirling Range Retreat, Red Card for Rabbits and Foxes.

For more information contact Laura Page, NSPNR Project Officer, on 0401 553 285 or laura@nspnr.com.au or  Elisa Santina, Yongergnow Manager/Finance Officer, 9828 2325.

AGM Throwback Thursday - Event Review

On the 12th of October, NSPNR’s 'Throwback Thursday' & AGM was held at the Ongerup Hall. It was a fantastic trip down memory lane and an inspiring look ahead. The strong turnout of over 50 NSPNR members and friends showed that unity is our strength in advancing Landcare for healthy landscapes and thriving communities.

We were lucky enough to have the talented Tyne Logan, National ABC Weather Reporter, join us and lead a panel discussion about the history and future of our group and the incredible work that’s been done across our catchment. Kevin Wise and Kingsley Vaux had lots to share with Tyne and the guests, both having close to 4 decades each of involvement with NSPNR (and the previous Gnowangerup Land Conservation District Committee – LCDC). Caroline House, EO, joined the panel too and discussed some of our current projects and future plans!

Some of the interesting things we learned and discussed with Tyne:

-          Kingsley’s success with sandalwood and his State Landcare award (nominated by Liz Bungey when she was working as a project officer)

-          The massive 1 million dollar project that Steve Newby obtained for the region in the 1990s that lead to a HUGE amount of revegetation of wildlife corridors etc

-          The success of the 1080 baiting program when there were smaller sub-catchment groups and the catchment leader would collect everyone’s baits and bring to their farm for collection (an interesting comparison to the much more rigorous rules around handling 1080 now!)

-          Discussion about the revolution that was the Chatfield Tree Planter, and how that changed the game for effective and efficient revegetation at scale, and the direct seeder – the CommVeg invented by Geoff Woodall for direct seeding native seed (BOTH of which are available for hire for NSPNR Members)

-          Many comparisons about the changes in how funding is granted and how much is available.

-          A constant theme was evident that since the early days there are many difficulties involved with the ebbs and flows of funding especially in how it impacts our group’s ability to employ staff long-term and keep up with changing funding ‘priorities’ to suit the NSPNR objectives and benefit our members.

Many thought-provoking conversations ensued; the panel and everyone enjoyed learning more about our region’s incredible work in landcare and sustainable agriculture – preserving and improving our natural resources. 

A massive thank you to Elisa and Yongergnow Malleefowl Centre café for the amazing 1980s-inspired dinner, equipment hire and assistance. Big thanks to the committee and staff for all your efforts setting up and on the night – especially to our Chair Ellen for her wonderful speech and our very talented volunteer Social Media guru Phoebe Milne for the amazing photos and ongoing work online! Thank you also has to go to all our wonderful guests who attended and the Shire of Gnowangerup, DPIRD and SCNRM representatives who made the effort to come along. Looking forward to next year’s AGM – likely to be in Gnowangerup.

This event was part of the ’40 years of Landcare in WA’ celebrations supported by WA Landcare Network & the WA Government’s State NRM Program.

Pictured: Ellen Milne (Chair), Caroline House (Executive Officer) and Brett Pritchard (Farmanco)