The Organisation

Natural resources include the air, soil, minerals, water, the landscape, and the plants and animals that live in it. These natural resources provide the rich environment in which we live, work and play.

 

We all impact on natural resources in the jobs we do and as we live our day-to-day lives. Natural resource management (NRM) describes how people use and look after these natural resources.

 

NRM is about ‘caring for our country’, and in doing so, caring for ourselves and our culture. It’s about looking after the environment and managing it for the future - making sure we have enough resources to move forward but not over-using them.

 

NRM is about keeping things sustainable and viable.  

Southern Gulf Catchments Ltd is a community-based organisation tasked with strategic and sustainable natural resource management (NRM) planning and implementation in the southern Gulf of Carpentaria region of northwest Queensland. NRM is the sustainable management of natural resources - land, soil, water, vegetation, wildlife, air - in a way that maintains and sustains its value for future generations. The region has an area of 195,000 square kilometres and comprises the catchments of the Flinders-Cloncurry, Leichhardt and Gregory-Nicholson Rivers, Settlement Creek and Morning Inlet, plus the Wellesley Islands group.

 

Southern Gulf Catchments is charged with the aims of protecting and restoring biodiversity values, arresting land degradation, improving water quality through decreased sedimentation and facilitating coastal and marine management. The organisation is funded by the Australian and Queensland Governments and assists the community in facilitating NRM activities ranging from weed control, riparian protection, biodiversity conservation and improved grazing management to fire management, coastal protection and building NRM capacity across communities.

 

Southern Gulf Catchments Coordinating Committee Steering Group was established in June 1996 to determine by community consultation whether a need existed for a regional Integrated Catchment Management (ICM) group. The Southern Gulf Catchments Co-ordinating Group was incorporated on 16 January 1997 (Incorporation Number IA17644) under the Associations Incorporation Act 1981. In March 1997, Southern Gulf Catchments Co-ordinating Group Inc made a commitment to the Natural Heritage Trust to develop a Regional Natural Resource Management Strategy, and in October 1997, the Group decided to change its name to Southern Gulf Catchments Incorporated, such name change being officially sanctioned on 11 February 1998. The Regional Strategy commenced development between January 1998 and February 1999, and resumed in June 1999 with NHT1 funding and has continued with interim and transition NHT funding pending accreditation of the Regional Investment Strategy.

 

A preliminary draft of the Southern Gulf Catchments Regional Strategy for Sustainable Natural Resource Management was largely prepared by Coordinator Geoff Dobson and released in October 1998 for public comment. The draft reflected the outcomes of regional consultations conducted by members of Southern Gulf Catchments Inc. In addition to the consultation processes, additional work was required to satisfy government guidelines for Regional Natural Resource Management Strategies. Throughout this period, an important document, A Regional Initiative towards Integrated Resource Management in North-west Queensland, was compiled for the Cloncurry Landcare Group by Oskar Kadletz with assistance from Bood Hickson, Alison Bohannon and Helen McKerrow; its final draft was also released in October 1998.

 

A draft Regional Strategy compiled by SGC employees Charles Curry and Andrew Humpherys was released in March 2000 for public consultation. Accordingly, that draft strategy built on those earlier consultation processes. It recognised that natural resource management is not just about protecting the environment from human impacts, but it is the foundation of sustainable management and development for the region. The draft Strategy also acknowledged that much has already been done which contributed to sustaining the natural resources of the region, and that Southern Gulf Catchments as a whole, including government agencies, business, industry, and the community, are important for the effective implementation of the Strategy.

 

The draft Regional Strategy included information published by government agencies and industry groups, and it collated issues and strategies developed from workshop outcomes, community consultations, the preliminary draft SGC Regional Strategy of October 1998, and strategy publications prepared by or for other interest groups in the Southern Gulf region. Stakeholder groups who contributed to the technical, practical, financial and/or administrative aspects of the project included community groups, schools, research organisations, local government, State Government, business and indigenous groups.

 

The draft Regional Strategy of March 2000 was the basis for a further round of widespread consultation with stakeholders in the Southern Gulf Catchments region, and the updated Regional Strategy (December 2001) was a further step along the way to finalising an agreed regional strategic plan for integrated natural resource use planning and management. This updated plan received interim endorsement from the Commonwealth and State Government Joint Steering Committee.

 

Southern Gulf Catchments Inc became Southern Gulf Catchments Limited on 24 November 2003, a registered public company limited by guarantee under the Corporations Act 2001, with ACN 107147802 and ABN 15030795778.

 

During 2004, extensive community consultation preceded the production of SGC’s Natural Resource Management Plan. Specifically designed for the region, the Plan was developed by a team of consultants led by Earth Tech in association with the SGC Board and staff, to accreditation standards as set by the Joint Steering Committee.

 

The SGC Natural Resource Management Plan was presented as a set of five books:

Book 1: The Community’s Natural Resource Management (NRM) Plan

Book 2: The Community Engagement and Communication Strategy

Book 3: The Capacity Development Strategy

Book 4: The Assets, Threats and Targets of the region

Book 5: Tracking Change – The Monitoring and Evaluation Strategy.

 

The Plan was accredited in January 2005 and published in March 2005. It was accompanied by a Summary document and a CD ROM. Supporting the Plan was the State of the Region 2004, also released in March 2005.

 

Associated with the Plan, the Regional Investment Strategy (RIS) was produced and was accredited on 23 June 2005. The RIS sets out a series of programs for investment and for the implementation of projects and activities to achieve the targets set in the NRM Plan.

 

A review of the RIS for the period 2004-05 to 2006-07 was undertaken in October-November 2005 and finalised in March 2006. A RIS review to cover 2007-08 was undertaken in January-February 2007, finalised in June 2007.

 

To prepare for the Australian Government’s Caring for our Country program, effectively replacing the Natural Heritage Trust, SGC produced a RIS for 2008-09, finalised in July 2008.

 

A review of the SGC Natural Resource Management Plan is being undertaken in early 2009.

 

In January 2009, in line with the CfoC (Caring for our Country) Business Plan 2009-2010, SGC developed funding applications to address the six CfoC National Priority Areas, viz., national reserve system, biodiversity and natural icons, coastal environments and critical aquatic habitats, sustainable farm practices, community skills, knowledge and engagement, and natural resource management in northern and remote Australia.