Government commitment to improve land management

The Queensland Government has committed a further $3 million for the LDC project in the Bowen Broken Bogie (BBB) catchment which includes the Bowen and Collinsville region.

This investment continues to support graziers, other land managers and the community to reduce sediment run-off, while continuing to develop a better understanding of best practice land management to improve water quality.

The panel scoped out potential land management and repair activities to roll out across the BBB catchment over the next three years, aimed at improving land condition and water quality. 

The focus areas: 

• BBB grazier support – delivering flexible and tailored services to support practice change.
• Influencing other land managers –  including national parks, coals mines, local councils, and major infrastructure and utility organisations, to achieve a whole-of-catchment effort.
• Policy engagement –  to support BBB landholders to cut through regulatory red tape that may be preventing them from adopting practice changes. This activity area will work with landholders to identify the most relevant regulation and policy issues to pursue. It will also support graziers to better understand regulatory requirements, and work with the government to explore opportunities for reviewing how regulations and police operate. 
• Traditional Owner community stewardship and empowerment – To support Traditional Owner groups and key regional stakeholders to work together to improve access to Country and capacity and partnership arrangements to deliver natural resource management (NRM) outcomes in the BBB.
• Community water quality monitoring – To learn more about how, when and where sediment (and nutrients attached to sediment) moves, and share data with the Queensland Government modelling team to enhance the Paddock to Reef Integrated Monitoring, Modelling and Reporting Program (Paddock to Reef Program) model and improve confidence in load estimates and results for the BBB catchment.

The NQ Dry Tropics delivery team is developing an implementation plan, and when endorsed by the panel, will start rolling out next year. 

The two-day panel meeting also included a field visit to White Kangaroo Station to see first hand what owners John and Bree Skinner were doing to regenerate their property to increase sustainable beef production while reducing their exposure to drought and variable seasons.

You can read more about their remarkable journey here. 

This latest funding is a great acknowledgement of landholders and land managers efforts and achievements to date, and we take our hats off to the BBB community for committing to continue to increase the productivity of their land while improving water quality through landscape interventions and land management.

LDC was born from recommendations made by the Great Barrier Reef Water Science Taskforce.

The Queensland Government funded the first phase of the LDC project 2017-2021. 

The BBB remains a pivotal catchment for improving water quality outcomes because it delivers about 50 per cent of the fine sediment load from the Burdekin Basin.

NQ Dry Tropics secured funding through the Great Barrier Reef Foundation’s partnership with the Australian Government’s Reef Trust to build on and continue the efforts of the Landholders Driving Change project (2021-2024). 

This funding supports a sediment reduction program to improve water quality in the Bowen, Broken, Bogie (BBB) catchment by delivering:

• accelerated grazing support (extension) to encourage adoption of improved land management practice, and;
• large and small-scale gully remediation.