Healing farmland with community planting days
By Jennifer McMillan 17 September 2024
On farmland located in Noongar Kaneang Country, in the southwest region of Western Australia, students, community members and Landcare volunteers are working together to heal agricultural land.
The planting site is home to Nick O’Halloran and his red kelpie, Tom. Wheat for bread, pasta and cakes, and oats for a cosy winter morning porridge are just a few of the crops his farm produces. The planting sites are part of a salt-affected creek line. Although some vegetation remains, more trees and shrubs are needed to soak up the water. When groundwater comes to the surface, it brings salt with it in some locations. If salt encroaches on agricultural land, it will impact the ability to grow crops and negatively affect food production.
National Tree Day Coordinator and Katanning Landcare Project Officer Annabel Paulley organises events to promote Landcare to town residents and farmers. After working with Nick on a project late last year, Annabel pitched the idea of holding a community planting day on the farm. The creek line needed over 15,000 trees and shrubs, so Nick jumped at the chance for community members to come and share in his Landcare project.
Residents in towns can be somewhat isolated from what’s going on in the agricultural landscape around them, so this is a great opportunity for farmers to bridge that gap by welcoming community members onto their farms.
“Inviting the community to revegetate farmland gives the townsfolk the chance to get out in nature and see what farmers are doing to heal the land,” says Annabel.
Community members can build positive relationships with farmers and learn about how Landcare projects are helping to restore agricultural landscapes for the benefit of the whole community.
“There’s something so wholesome about planting trees in a group,” Annabel says, “it feeds your soul.”
The native shrubs and grasses will also provide much-needed future habitat and foraging plants for native animals and birds including the endangered Carnaby’s black-cockatoos (Ngoolark in Noongar language). The cockatoos visit the Katanning area between July and January each year, travelling inland from coastal areas to breed in blocks of remnant native vegetation. They breed in monogamous pairs for life, nesting in hollows in old eucalypts which must be at least 100 years old to have hollows large enough. The mums and dads creche their young in a ‘nursery tree’, hidden high up among dense foliage. Land-clearing and deforestation has contributed to their decline, which has seen more than 90 per cent of their main foraging, breeding and roosting habitat disappear since European settlement.
Volunteers will be planting white gum (Eucalyptus wandoo) trees, which will provide future nesting hollows for black-cockatoos. A variety of hakeas and acacias will also be planted as future food sources for these birds.
School students and community members hosted a three-day planting extravaganza called the Katanning Multi-cultural Wildlife and Landcare Weekend. The event was hosted in June to give the seedlings the best chance to establish their roots before the long, hot summer returns.
Jen worked as a vet nurse while studying environmental science and completing her master's degree in Journalism. She loves bushwalking, storytelling, caring for baby animals, Australian birds and river red gums. Jen works on the National Tree Day campaign and Planet Ark's Seedling Bank.
