YYS Landcare

Just in time for the National Pollinator Count

Yinnar, Yinnar South Landcare group is starting a project to propagate plants that will help wild pollinators to keep a toe-hold in the eco-system.

Base-line data is important for those who are doing research in this field, and anybody can contribute. You can join in the National Wild Pollinator Count this autumn by watching any flowering plant for just ten minutes sometime between April 11 and April 18.

• You don’t need to be an insect expert.
• You don’t need fancy gear.
• You may be surprised by what you see!

If you get your Churchill News too late for the autumn count, there’ll be another chance in spring between November 14 and November 21. More information from: https://wildpollinatorcount.com/

Carbon Concerns

West Gippsland Catchment Management Authority has just completed a community survey to gauge community concerns in relation to land, water and biodiversity across the West Gippsland Region.

Climate change was a concern for most survey participants across the region, especially as, among other effects, it is expected to result in:

• Increased fire risk
• A warmer and drier climate
• More frequent storms and floods, including coastal storm surges

Obviously, stopping carbon emissions is the number one way to try and prevent the earth from reaching a forecast tipping point. (This will occur when catastrophic warming won’t be able to be stopped. It is currently forecast to happen around 2030, but may happen sooner.)

With this in mind, we thought that readers might welcome some news about what some landholders in our area are doing on their farms to help to take carbon out of the atmosphere and lock it up in forests and the soil.

Bio-Diverse forests for carbon sequestration

There are many schemes now that will plant trees on private land as carbon offsets for industries that haven’t yet made the transition to renewable energy.

For example, Greening Australia is running a scheme that aims to keep bio-diversity central to its planting regimes.

They are looking for property owners wishing to establish carbon forests on some or all of their land. Total areas of greater than 20 hectares per farm are needed to make the projects economically viable, and there is no cost to the landholder in establishing the forests.

The agreements that are signed at the beginning of each project run for 25 to 100 years and a caveat is placed on the property title to ensure that these agreements continue if a property is sold during this time.

There is a much more extensive fact sheet available from our group and/or from our local Greening Australia point of contact: Drew Liepa 0439 557 304 dliepa@greeningaustralia.org.au

Greening Australia’s Biodiverse Carbon contact is:
James McGregor 0437 629 081 james.mcgregor@biodiversecarbon.com

Regenerative agriculture and soil carbon sequestration

This is a big topic and we’ll write it up at greater length for the May edition of Churchill & District News.

J. Duncan

Secretary, Yinnar, Yinnar South Landcare Group

https://www.landcarevic.org.au/groups/westgippsland/yinnar-south/