Landcare
Taking care of the Land together
🐝 Living on 350 acres means there is always something to do on the land.
The more we are, the easier and faster it is, meanwhile building up our community Spirit.
Let's get together!
🐝 WORKING BEES 🐝
Lillifield Landcare History
Inspired by one of our members, Bob Roberts, early in 2002 we registered with the official organisation Landcare as the Lillifield Landcare Group. It was at this time that Federal Government funding, from the sale of Telstra, was being distributed to community projects through the Natural Heritage Trust. For the next 6 years we managed to successfully gain access to this funding on a number of occasions as we worked out what projects to attempt to try to restore some of the natural habitat on Lillifield. These projects have been undertaken along watercourses and a number of areas needing planting or clearing for a variety of reasons – koala access, watercourse stagnation, erosion and weed infestation.
2002
A great deal of the work was to clear heavy weed infestations, particularly of Lantana and Privet. This allowed the natural regeneration of species that had been smothered by the introduced weedy ones. With the clearing and some supplementation of planting we have managed, over more than 10 years now, to reintroduce and encourage plant biodiversity.
It is pretty satisfying to know, that due to hundreds of hours of continuing volunteer work by a number of community members, we hopefully have managed to provide a better habitat and food supply for our furry friends and bird species.
In association with the Kyogle Landcare officers, we have also managed to host several workshops in the Lillifield Community Centre for the regional landcare groups and interested people in the wider area. Northern Landcare Support Services, through our Kyogle office, organized and funded specialist speakers on a whole range of topics dealing with trees, weeds, grasses and understorey plants, . All the workshops were very well attended with informative, interesting topics programmed, leading to a much better appreciation of what is needed to care for our places. Kyogle Landcare has also organized various other workshops and events related to landcare matters and a number of our group have attended many of these. With the current changes that are occurring in government revisions of the organizing and funding of the present Landcare organisation, we are also taking part in the discussions about how this will impact on the present landcare groups.
In 2010, we were encouraged to enter into association with the Community Environment Network Inc. and successfully achieved, for Lillifield, Land for Wildlife status. This makes Lillifield community part of the greater movement for properties being managed more thoughtfully to encourage and protect biodiversity of both plant and animal life. Whilst we had government funding on a number of occasions till 2008, for the last 11 years it is through the generosity of yearly budget allocations from community funds that has been the financial backbone for the work that we have been able to do on Lillifield.
2010
This is ongoing and is much appreciated. One present project funded this way is the assembling and distribution of nesting boxes for various small animals and a variety of bird.
This, hopefully will provide safe “homes” for successful breeding. These will be spread around Lillifield in specific areas and monitored on a regular basis by interested community members.
Lillifield is a pretty special environment. Whilst everyone is engaged in looking after and caring for their own specific area where they live, the extent of our collective environment is significantly large enough to warrant an extensive project or two to be tackled, at times with outside help providing both physical help and providing relevant knowledge.
Lillifield Landcare Group, with support from the vast majority of members, tries to foster an involvement and understanding of what can be done when many hands get going to improve the environment, both for ourselves and for all the creatures sharing it together.
Brigitte Stievermann.