Elizabeth Goodfellow is the 2018-19 winner of the Yass Area Network John Betts Award. The John Betts Award which was established in 2007 in memory of local Landcare legend John Betts and recognises outstanding service to Landcare. Elizabeth is the first member from Bowning-Bookham Landcare to win this award.

Together, Elizabeth and her husband Mark were among the founding members of the Bowning-Bookham Districts Landcare Group when it was first formed in 2013. Elizabeth has helped to organise many of the Group’s guest speakers, visits, workshops and field days over the years.  More recently, Elizabeth helped the Group to win a grant of over $99 000 from the NSW Government Environment Trust for a three year Burrinjuck to Bango Habitat Hops project which aims to establish a network of paddock trees and tree lanes on farms to provide bird and wildlife habitats, as well as soil and agriculture productivity.

Elizabeth is now managing the Habitat Hops Project including supporting landholders to establish and fence paddock trees and shelter belts. The Project has also stimulated the development of the Group’s four Landholder-run nurseries for propagation of seedlings.  While Elizabeth manages the Burrinjuck to Bango Habitat Hops project she also gets involved in the sowing, weeding, thinning and general management of plants in the Bowning-Bookham Landcare nurseries and at the regular group workshops.  Elizabeth has also used this project to gather Landcare members from around the wider region to  explore and decide what positive local actions can be taken to begin adapting farming and conservation efforts to climate change.

While professionally Elizabeth is an organisational change and governance advisor and a company director, her range of skills and interests outside Landcare such as local food, regenerative agriculture and waste reduction show she has a wider passion for community and the environment.  Elizabeth is an outstanding recipient of the award, as were the earlier winners of this service award including Ross Webster, Ray Malam and Jacqui Stol.

Always looking to help out local landholders, Elizabeth also asked us to add that there is room for 5-10 more families located between Burrinjuck and Bango in the Habitat Hops project this Autumn and Winter. Landcare supplies trees and fencing funding with the assistance of the NSW Environmental Trust – interested members of the community can contact Elizabeth on 0437 178 357, look for Bowning Bookham Landcare on facebook or the web, or talk to her at the New From Old Stall at the Yass Community Market on the 3rd Saturday of the month.

Linda Thane is the 2018-19 Yass Area Network Landcarer of the year for the Bowning-Bookham Districts Landcare Group.  Linda has held the leadership role of President for that group for the past two years.  

One of Linda’s passions is managing a large Landcare native nursery on behalf of the Group, tending and growing several thousand tube-stock each year.  The tube-stock benefit all members and the community by providing free and low cost native seedlings which are planted around our district. Linda also organises propagation and thinning days for group members at the nursery however she undertakes the day to day weeding, management and watering herself.

Linda is a keen supporter of regenerative agriculture, innovative practices and participates in robust debates - always encouraging landholders to have a go at tree planting and to learn more about the local environment.

Linda encourages Landcare members to develop skills and to take up new challenges and learning by encouraging members to attend field days focussing on practical skills and knowledge transfer.

In the last year, Bowning-Bookham District has extended its discussion and actions further into regenerative agriculture and understanding how to adapt to our changing climate.  As President and meeting chair, Linda has guided the group and created a supportive environment for robust and productive debate and action.

It rained for the first time in a long time but it was good weather to give newly sown native seed a drink so five members of Bowning-Bookham Landcare worked in a horse shed rather than the nursery at the latest sowing of native seed at our Fairyhole Rd Landcare nursery. 

900 pots of under-storey plants were sown including Old Man Saltbush, Creeping Saltbush, Hakea Ericifolia, Wooly Wattle and Hickory Wattle.  We look forward to planting them into our Landcare member paddocks after it rains again in Autumn 2019.

Plant Selection and Sourcing for Future Climate — an action planning workshop for landcare growers and nurseries — was held on 5 October 2018 at Tootsie Fine Art & Design, Yass. The workshop was hosted by Bowning-Bookham Landcare and sponsored by the NSW Environmental Trust.

The purpose of this workshop was to bring landcare nurseries, growers and scientists together to develop action plan/s for sourcing seed and plants for habitat hops and linkages that will survive and thrive long into the future.
 
While the climate-ready revegetation guide gives natural resource managers tools to understand the uncertainties of climate, we need to turn these ideas into reality so that the seed and plants we grow for our habitat hops and linkages have a good chance of surviving into the future where the weather will be hotter, more variable and less predictable.  

The purpose of working together is to help us support the local environment to adapt to the changes in climate, which needs a larger network, resources and projects to achieve it than each individual or group can implement.

To do this we need seeds and people to collect, grow, plant, and advise as well as sites and resources to make it happen.

Our landcare nurseries need an action plan to decide not just what seed or plants will suit the climate, but also how to source and grow these species.

Stay tuned for updates about how you and your group can be involved in this exciting project.

Hancock, N., Harris, R., Broadhurst, L. and Hughes, L. 2018. Climate-ready revegetation. A guide for natural resource managers. Version 2. Macquarie University, Sydney.
http://anpc.asn.au/resources/climate_ready_revegetation