With a track record of delivering natural resource management projects since our original inception back in 2015, we were called on to support a project behind schedule. 2020/2021 was a challenge for everyone, and Covid lockdowns had prevented the necessary property visits to move the project along.
The project aimed to protect 510km of riparian areas on priority waterways throughout Southern Queensland from grazing pressures, by supporting landholders to erect fences. When we took over the project in late November 2021, 166km had been executed.
Although floods, Covid, Christmas, and more floods challenged us at every turn, by the start of February 2022, we had communicated over the phone with more than 60 landholders, completed more than 40 property inspections, and contracted 372km of fencing, well exceeding targets.
We had taken the project from well behind schedule to more than 12 months in front, in just over 2 months (with Christmas in the middle)!
We prioritised communication, both with project participant landholders, our client and their funders.
One of the keys to success in delivering this project was to develop a ‘virtual’ property visit process, which was so successful the project culminated in our client asking us to deliver training to their internal team to continue with this new improved process for success into the future.
We were lucky enough to be able to visit breath-taking properties and meet inspiring landholders from the top of the Condamine catchment around Killarney, all the way through the Border Rivers and out to the mighty Maranoa near Saint George, hearing stories and seeing the scars of droughts and flooding rains.
Dorothea Mackellar’s words rang true:
I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.
You can see some of our trip highlights and hear from our client and a project participant with the videos on this page.