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Rehydrating landscapes through communities of practice

Working with land managers at a catchment scale to improve water cycling and manage climate risk

The ‘Communities of Practice Project (CoPP)’ is led by Mulloon Institute and involves working with land managers around Australia to strategically improve water cycling and manage climate risk.

The project is designed as a collaboration between the Institute and regional partners to foster the growth of local ‘communities of practice’ in five regions around Australia that will continue beyond the project period. Over two years, Mulloon Institute staff will lead a series of activities that build participants’ capacity to plan, design and undertake landscape rehydration projects using low-risk, nature-based solutions for drought resilience. 

Find out more about the project here.

Project Partners

This project is led by Mulloon Institute in collaboration with regional partners. Mulloon Institute are leaders in landscape rehydration and restoration, working with farmers across Australia to create resilient, productive and profitable farms where agriculture and the environment are working in unison. Soils for Life’s role is the development of landscape rehydration case studies.

Stories of landscape rehydration

Soils for Life will produce a case study on the Community of Practice Project (CoPP) located in northern NSW, and on rehydration ‘trailblazer’ Charlie Maslin. 

Watch this space as we document the growth in the community of practice surrounding the Swan Brook catchment in northern NSW.

Podcast: Restoring the water cycle on the Monaro, with Charlie Maslin

We’ve heard from many farmers about creeks and rivers that are severely eroded, and landscapes that have lost their ability to absorb and store water. In big rain events water runs off and is gone in a matter of days or even hours. We’ve become accustomed to this, but what did those landscapes look and function like 100 years ago, or 200 years ago? Can farmers restore creeks and landscapes to their full potential, holding on to water for longer and utilising better?

This podcast episode is a collaborative effort with our friends at Mulloon Institute as part of their Communities of Practice Project. In it, we chat with Charlie Maslin, an amazing land steward raising cattle and sheep on the Monaro in New South Wales.

Charlie took us on his journey of landscape repair, which began with a change in grazing practices to improve ground cover, and then moved on to focus on repairing his degraded waterways to rehydrate the landscape and support a thriving and productive agro-ecosystem.

Listen to the full episode

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Communities in action

The greatest benefits can be achieved when communities of land managers work together to address problems at a catchment scale. The Northern Tablelands Communities of Practice group is made up of farmers from the Swan Brook catchment and beyond, GWYMAC Landcare, Swan Vale Landcare, Northern Tablelands Local Land Services and Mulloon Institute. The group recently came together at a Boots on the Ground event in May 2024 where they helped fellow farmer and project participant, Codie Law, build a few simple landscape rehydration interventions on his Swan Vale property, Yarrawa Park. Each land manager is working on their own rehydration project, supported by project partners and events. 

Watch this space as we document the growth in the community of practice surrounding the Swan Brook catchment.

Further reading

Read our article on how land managers are working toghether, at cathcment scale, to redhydrate their landscapes and restore water funtion and degraded soils.

Read the article

Watch this space for more articles about the project. Subscribe to our newsletter and we’ll keep you updated!

This project is supported by the Mulloon Institute, through funding from the Australian Government’s Future Drought Fund.