Few people have more stories from the wild corners of the world than Dr Chadden Hunter. He has worked alongside Sir David Attenborough for over 20 years, documenting everything from snow leopards in Pakistan to anaconda in the Amazon. Chadden has produced some of the world’s most famous wildlife series; Planet Earth 1 & 2, Wild Arabia, Frozen Planet and Seven Worlds One Planet, and has won over 20 Emmys and Baftas. He
spent three years in the Arctic and Antarctic directing the Frozen Planet series where he learnt that -40C was cold enough to freeze his eyes shut.
His anecdotes are as inspirational as they are entertaining – sometimes heart-breaking, often humorous, always riveting.

Shane Fitzsimmons, Commissioner of Resilience NSW, will inspire the crowd in Tweed Heads as the keynote speaker for the NSW Landcare & Local Land Services Conference in 2022. Commissioner Fitzsimmons will draw from his experiences as the former Commissioner of the Rural Fire Service (RFS), guiding NSW through the devastating 2019-20 bushfire season, to delve into a range of thought-provoking topics. “Our recent experiences – from drought and bushfire, storm and flood, to COVID-19 – have shown us that collaboration is key to improving response, recovery and building resilience into the future,” Commissioner Fitzsimmons said. “This event is an opportunity to reflect, consider lessons learnt, and identify ways we can better work together and with the community to improve outcomes for all into the future. “After being so actively involved in the bushfire response as the NSW RFS Commissioner, I’m now in the unique and privileged position of working with those same communities through their bushfire recovery as the Commissioner of Resilience NSW. “As part of this event, I will share my personal experience of the 2019-20 bushfire season, provide an update on the recovery operation and outline my vision for a more aware, more prepared and more resilient NSW.”

Fire, rainforests, resilience: Nightcap resilience project healing country and community
The Summer of 2019/20 saw massive shifts in the ecological and cultural landscapes of the Nightcap and Terania communities in and adjacent to the World Heritage Gondwanan Rainforests of Northern NSW. This presentation is about the renewal of life and community resilience here on Widjabul Wyabul country.  Out of the ashes of the most intense bush fires in the forests’ recent history, the Nightcap Resilience Projects were initiated.  With site action planning, bush regeneration & revegetation, community engagement, working with Traditional Owners, training & resource development, Nightcap Resilience covers a broad range of actions seeking to connect community and heal country.  The Projects are a collaborative effort between local government, Traditional Owners, Landcare and landholders, with high expectations and a deep sense of respect for local communities of landholders and custodians who have been building resilient approaches to life in this diverse, intrinsically valuable place of life-source connection. 

Catchment Changemakers – revitalising community leadership on river restoration

The Catchment Changemakers course was established to encourage volunteers to become more active and capable in running activities and groups.   

The Parramatta River Catchment Group is fortunate to have four Riverkeeper Ambassadors who undertake on-ground work and education.  Based on their feedback and support, the Catchment Changemakers course was designed for skill development so that participants would feel able to undertake independent community education and action.  The participants applied to join the course and have a strong interest in caring for the river. They needed a structure to convert that interest into process or projects that can make a measurable improvement to the catchment ecosystems. The course included a catchment crawl and 7 workshops with both content about the Parramatta River Masterplan, as well as processes of establishing and running a collaborative project.  Essential to the course was a pilot project that was tested after Workshop 5 of the course. 

The Changemakers are organising education and action projects for communities that have changed their relationship to local areas. There are now greater numbers of opportunities for rivercare as residents value the ecological as well as the mental well-being values of waterways and riparian areas in the catchment.

Early Change Monitoring – Rethinking our approaches to identifying native vegetation clearing and engaging with our landholder community

The Department of Planning, Industry and Environment (DPIE) has been monitoring native vegetation clearing using satellite monitoring for many years. The State-wide Landcover and Trees Study (SLATS) involves comparing satellite images of the same area every twelve months to detect vegetation changes. SLATS is a comprehensive tool but does not allow for rapid identification and prompt responses to unexplained clearing. It can take up to 24 months before DPIE is ready to contact landholders about SLATS-detected clearing. In 2020 DPIE introduced Early Change Monitoring (ECM) to compliment SLATS. ECM can identify unexplained clearing every four weeks. This paper discusses how ECM has been used as an early intervention tool by DPIE to rethink its approaches to native vegetation compliance. Besides its compliance purpose, the ECM findings have been also used by DPIE and LLS to engage with landowners and educate them on improving the protection of biodiversity and native vegetation. 

Rising Strong: Adapting Landcare and building (bio)bridges

The Rising Strong Project is a community-focused climate adaptation education project based in the Northern Rivers.  Delivered by North Coast Regional Landcare Network in partnership with Tweed Landcare, Brunswick Valley Landcare, Richmond Landcare, Border-Ranges-Rivers Landcare Network and Upper Clarence Combined Landcare, the project was born of a desire to amplify the impact and collaboration between regional Landcare Networks on shared issues- in this case, climate change and biodiversity.  The project tells a story about community resilience, how we learn to change our viewpoints, leaning into uncertainty and the potential for Landcare to act as an adaptation pathway. The presentation will share the highs, lows and lessons of the project’s delivery, along with a key output of the project- an 8-minute video about creating ‘biobridges’- habitat corridors which help conserve biodiversity in a shifting climate.  The project is funded by the NSW Environmental Trust. 

Working with CSIRO to help farmers value vegetation on farm

North West LLS partnered with CSIRO’s Pest Suppressive Landscapes team to design a monitoring program to gather data on beneficial insects in brigalow woodland in North West NSW. Through greenhouse trials, sampling of insects in the field and community engagement activities, the four year program aims to increase awareness and understanding amongst landholders and community members of the role that beneficial insects play in managing pest insects in cropping landscapes. Using malaise traps, beat box and D-vac techniques, the CSIRO team collect and analyse insects within brigalow treelines, shelter belts and vegetation clumps adjacent to crops. The information collected meaningfully engages farmers on how healthy vegetation on farm can support healthy beneficial insect populations, thus aiming to influence vegetation management practises. 

Rehydration in the Rangelands of  Western NSW

The FWRRA is a group of private landholders that are passionate about re-establishing the natural ecosystems on their respective properties. Collectively, the total land represents 926,000 hectares. The landholders have each undertaken Ecosystem Management Understanding study to help them understand how they can best improve raindrop retention to increase soil moisture so that vast swarths of Rangelands can have the necessary sub surface moisture to germinate, nourish and promote to maturity native species of flora and fauna. The Alliance has been successful in securing funding for a variety of projects including the establishment of twenty seed nurseries across sixteen properties, sub soil moisture monitoring in partnership with DPI, LLS and Western Landcare NSW, landscape filters tackling erosion, and bank and ponding strategies to promote seed germination and recruitment. 

Addressing transformer weed threats to secure a representative network of coastal floodplain threatened ecological communities in the North Coast Bioregion

North Coast LLS is leading a new approach to Threatened Ecological Community (TEC) recovery focussed on landscape-scale restoration of coastal floodplain TECs to protect a network of sites across a 250km north-south gradient. These TECs are under significant threat from inappropriate fire, transformer weeds and urban pressures putting them on a trajectory to extinction with rapid and significant reduction in geographic distribution, composition and ecological function across their full range. Funding has been secured for a 7-year program of habitat restoration works that will allow for efficient management of current and emerging threats while also providing opportunity to be adaptive and flexible to changing priorities.  Floodplain coastal TECs are at the forefront of climate change impacts such as storms, flooding, sea level rise and coastal erosion/degradation. They often provide valuable ecosystem services such as coastal stabilisation and flood mitigation – increasingly critical for coastal towns and cities in a changed climate. The project has strong partnerships and collaboration with Aboriginal landowners and managers, local councils and Landcare ensuring broad community involvement and ownership of project activities and outcomes. 

Improving nest box occupancy rates

The installation of nest boxes is a commonly promoted habitat improvement option. However, there are hundreds of reports of nest boxes installed previously, never being used by the target species, not being used by any native species, and supporting the success of feral species. Through my own experiences of installing, monitoring, solving identified issues, and much research into the different species needs of native hollow using species, I have achieved near 100% occupancy rates for the more than 30 nest boxes installed on my 4-acre regenerating property near Canberra. From this experience and discovering significant misunderstandings of how to ensure nest boxes are used by native hollow using species (and don’t cause harm), I decided to develop a website and Facebook group to get this info out to as many people that could put it to use as possible. And so I began nest box tales.

Rethinking Landcare – Ask the big questions and get answers

Using SLIDO the audience will be asked the Elephant in the Room questions about rethinking Landcare. This includes big topics like fee for service, the different perceptions about volunteers, business partnerships, government delivery and representation by Landcare NSW; the true value of Landcare; what do we represent in the future. The Rethinking questions will be compiled through collaborations with LLS, Landcare NSW Program Team and Landcare NSW. Each question will be posed with background information/evidence.  The aim is to stimulate thought, creating debate and recognising the challenges of Landcare groups regionally and locally while getting real time feedback. This will be one of the first times that conference attendees can use their voice plus receive direct feedback in real time. Answers should recognise the interests of Landcare to provide solutions to the issues that matter to their communities – e.g.  climate change adaption, sustainability, Aboriginal engagement, biodiversity management and caring for communities., contributing to a robust discussion on the renewed direction for Landcare.