The Mulloon Institute (TMI), Media Release, 21 July 2022
“The Mulloon Institute heartily welcomes the Environment and Water Minister Tanya Plibersek’s calls for structural reform and new environmental legislation,” said Mr Gary Nairn AO, Chairman of the Mulloon Institute and former Federal Liberal MP.
The Institute restores degraded landscapes across Australia for improved agricultural productivity, enhanced environmental outcomes, improved biodiversity including habitat for threatened species, and greater community resilience to drought, bushfire and flood.
It leads the way in Australia for property and landscape scale environmental repair in partnership with Australian farming communities, that includes rigorous scientific research, education programs and demonstration sites.
Globally, its work has been recognised by the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network.
“We’re working with farmers and community groups to restore landscape function and create more resilient, productive and profitable landscapes where agriculture and the environment are working together.
This benefits a diversity of landscapes by improving soil health, boosting biodiversity, increasing farm productivity and bolstering community resilience,” said Mr Nairn.
The Institute’s award-winning Mulloon Rehydration Initiative is working with 23 landholders to regenerate and rehydrate the 23,000ha Mulloon catchment on Australia’s east coast.
The Initiative is underpinned by a comprehensive, integrated research program monitoring the effects of stream interventions on the catchment’s hydrology, ecology and farm productivity.
The results so far are positive, satellite monitoring shows increased biomass production (and so increased farm productivity) on adjacent floodplains, hydrological monitoring shows improved water quality and quantity and increased soil moisture, biodiversity monitoring has revealed an increase in species richness and density in treated areas particularly for frogs, fish and birds.
Urgent demand from farmers across Australia for similar projects in their area has seen the Institute develop a National Rehydration Initiative, with the goal to provide fully monitored catchment-scale landscape rehydration demonstrations and training in every state and territory.
These works are fully scalable with projects being replicated in New South Wales, Australian Capital Territory, northern Queensland, West Australian Wheatbelt and the Northern Territory. Works are also planned for sites in Victoria.
Such projects regularly hit hurdles from environmental legislation that was originally designed to protect the environment – with regulatory obstacles and prohibitive costs to farmers deterring them from undertaking regenerative works.
“While it is relatively easy to build leaky weirs and other landscape rehydration works in degraded catchments, the problem is getting approvals to build such structures. Constraints of state-based regulations are proving prohibitive to farmers in getting these important landscape works done,” said Carolyn Hall, TMI’s CEO Managing Director.
“We’re currently working with the NSW Government’s Department of Planning, Industry and Environment to streamline the approval process for landscape restoration projects in the state.
This is critical for expanding this kind of work and will help inform regulatory reform in other states and at the national level,” Mrs Hall said.
This work is considered critical in farmers providing solutions to climate change. Under the NSW’s Department Primary Industries Climate Change Adaptation Program, the Institute is working with environmental monitoring specialists HydroTerra and a variety of experts to develop a landscape rehydration priority map for NSW, identifying which catchments are most suitable to build drought resilience with this technique.
“We’d like to invite Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek to visit the Mulloon Institute and see how our work helps reverse the degradation of our Australian landscapes, making them more resilient to climate extremes”, said Mrs Hall.
