Fencing at Amelia Downs to enable better pasture management.

GRASS plans to improve land condition across more than 4000km²

GRASS Senior Project Officer Carleigh Drew.

The Grazing Resilience and Sustainable Solutions (GRASS) program is helping graziers to improve land condition on their properties.

The GRASS program supports graziers to develop and implement a tailor-made action plan for land management (APLM). The APLM assists graziers to improve and then maintain their land condition with a specific focus on improving ground cover.

In doing so, graziers are also taking steps in line with their obligations under Reef protection regulations to maintain land condition, reduce erosion, and ultimately, protect the Great Barrier Reef.

NQ Dry Tropics grazing extension staff have compiled 32 GRASS APLMs in the catchments of the Burdekin, Don, Haughton and Ross rivers.

The APLMs cover more than 415,000ha and were compiled after project officers and landholders worked together to establish a starting point, or baseline, against which improvements could be measured each year.

The areas of concern are subject to land condition assessments, during which monitoring points are established and a list of actions is drafted to guide the landholder to achieve their goals.

The project provides landholders with a digital map of their property enabling access to historical satellite data measuring groundcover, some going back three decades, as well as updated imagery, so they can get similar data to measure their progress as the land condition improves.

In addition to the APLMs, the GRASS team has, in conjunction with the Department of Agriculture and Fisheries, contracted 28 incentive projects in the Burdekin catchment during the year. The resulting on-ground works assist graziers to manage identified vulnerable land.

NQ Dry Tropics’ GRASS Project Manager Carleigh Drew said GRASS also helped graziers make their businesses more profitable and resilient.

The GRASS program is funded through the Queensland Government’s Queensland Reef Water Quality Program and delivered by the Department of Agriculture and Fisheries (DAF), Burnett Mary Regional Group, Fitzroy Basin Association and NQ Dry Tropics.

A watering point at Lynmore Station.