NEWS
Nominate a landcare hero
2 July 2009
Landcare Australia announced the opening of their 2009 WA Landcare Awards this morning with an urgent call for people from around the state to nominate their local environmental heroes. This year, there are new categories recognising the growing number of young leaders and urban landcare groups.
The Landcare Awards are sponsored by the Department of Agriculture and Food and will be held in conjunction with their Natural Resource Management Conference in Geraldton this October.
The 13 awards categories are designed to honor all of the dedicated Landcare, Coastcare and other community groups and individuals making critical contributions to the conservation of our precious West Australian environment.
Two forestry-related awards
This years state awards include two categories of importance to the forestry industry, the Australian Forest Growers WA Tree Farmer of The Year Award and Department of Agriculture and Food's Landcare Professional Award.
The AFG WA Tree Farmer of the Year Award honours and acknowledges landowners or private forest managers who, by their personal efforts, demonstrate effective tree growing, silvicultural management of tree crop areas, or other forestry practices on their property, to achieve one or more of the following aims:
- production of timber or other commercial products,
- protection of agricultural assets, production systems, water, and
- biodiversity conservation and enhancement of natural bushland.
The Landcare Professional Award aims to recognise the outstanding efforts of an individual employed in landcare. It will be made to a person whose efforts in their paid position to develop, carry out and promote landcare within the community have made an outstanding contribution to sustainable land management.
Minister for the Environment, Heritage and the Arts Peter Garrett has said that landcare was without a doubt one of the greatest Australian innovations, ‘It shows the capacities of communities to work well… It shows the strengths we have to connect with the land…to really try and look after the place much better than has been the case in the past.’
Previous WA state winners, Oyster Harbour Catchment Group, went on to win at a national Landcare Awards level, taking out the 2008 Community Group category for their environmental efforts on the Kalgan River, Oyster Harbour and the Gondwana Link Project in Mount Barker.
WA Landcare Public Relations Manager Amy Green said, ‘Finalists often find that not only are they more successful during the grant rounds, but the platform provided by the state awards to discuss their important environmental work and gain support and volunteers can be a great advantage for their group.’
Long time Landcare supporter Jack Thompson, who presented and performed with the Whitlams at last year’s National Landcare Awards said, “Australia is the most urbanised country in the world so building a stronger bridge between the city and the country in terms of biodiversity and sustainable food production is necessary for our future.”
More information about the awards categories and entry requirements can be found at http://wa.landcareheroes.com.
Downloads
- State and territory landcare awards brochure - 399kb PDF
- State and territory landcare awards nomination form - 235kb Microsoft Word
- WA landcare awards brochure and nomination form - 157kb PDF
