Southern Gulf Graziers Leading Landscape Change

This Natural Resources Investment Program (NRIP) project will support 20 Southern Gulf graziers to improve NRM practices over 80,000 hectares in the Southern Gulf region through a structured program of property management planning and related incentive payments.

The primary and usually inter-linked NRM problems that need to be addressed in this landscape vary from property to property and include:

• Reduction of perennial native vegetation cover arising from excessive grazing pressure,

• Increased risk of wind and water erosion arising from loss of vegetation cover,

• Loss of natural and production values in native rangelands ecosystems as a result of extensive woody weed invasion and encroachment.

The NRIP project explicitly adopts a producer and property-centric approach, recognising that the only path to enduring NRM practice improvement at the scale of the Southern Gulf landscape is to support improvements in the grazing industry.

The incentives program of the NRIP project for on-ground works will be administered in year 2019-2022 in parallel with the property planning activities. Incentives will be offered on a competitive basis against project-relevant criteria to support implementation of actions that provide the best NRM value in the context of each property management plan. Threatening processes will be identified through property management planning and those processes will be prioritized and incentive funding will be provided to that priority project. It could be riparian fencing, fencing to a particular land type, or treatment of invasive plant infestation. This project will support 20 Southern Gulf graziers to improve NRM management practices over up to 80,000 hectares in the Southern Gulf region through a structured program of property management planning and related incentive payments. The properties will be located in five of the nine shires across the region.

This project is funded by Queensland Government’s Natural Resources Investment Program (NRIP)