It’s great news that the Queensland Government has committed to two major integrated projects (MIPs) to reduce nutrient, sediment, and pesticide loads into waterways in the Wet Tropics and Burdekin regions.
Both MIPs take a ‘from the ground up’ approach and involve a first phase focused on engaging with agricultural land users to design projects.
The Burdekin MIP, called Landholders Driving Change, is located in the Bowen-Broken-Bogie catchment and works mostly with graziers to reduce sediment and particulate nutrient losses.
It is generating excitement with graziers because they perceive it as a real opportunity to make the Burdekin MIP truly landholder- driven and because it places the sustainability of grazing enterprises at the centre of how graziers manage the landscape to rebuild soil health and control soil erosion.
But it is not just the graziers that are excited.
The research community is also enthusiastically involved with the Landholders Driving Change project, which is run by NQ Dry Tropics along with a consortium of 17 partner organisations that has a wide range of farming and scientific expertise.
One reason is that it represents a highly innovative way of linking science with graziers in a participatory research mode that enables past and current research to be adapted and packaged in a much more meaningful way.
Not only does this ensure that the actions and choices being made by landholders are likely to be effective and built on best available knowledge, it also means that there will be a much greater value add and return on research investment.
Another reason is that the project also opens the space to test how graziers’ knowledge and innovation can be linked back to and complement formal science.
There will be many ways to experiment jointly on how this works best.
For instance scientists and technical experts will take the lead in designing ways to remediate major alluvial gully systems that require engineering approaches, but that can benefit from graziers’ experience in sourcing the requisite materials and how to use stock to even out gully edges.
Another example is graziers establishing new ways of engaging with all landholders in the catchment to foster a more inclusive response to catchment management.
Who and how to best engage can be informed by social research and an analysis of some of the attitudinal and institutional factors that present barriers to broader engagement.
We anticipate that this joint approach will be highly beneficial to all involved and generate many new valuable insights, and that it will become a model for how we can re-energise engagement with landholders to better manage land in other catchments of the Great Barrier Reef.
- CSIRO principal scientist Dr Christian Roth has a PhD in soil physics and more than 30 years’ experience in tropical land and water management.
He is working alongside graziers, technical specialists and other scientists to improve land and water quality as part of NQ Dry Tropics’ Landholders Driving Change project.
This project is funded by the Queensland Government.