Evidence-Based
Landscape Restoration
Calperum and Taylorville Stations are part of the Bookmark Mallee, spanning over one million hectares of continuous native vegetation from Waikerie, SA to Scotia and Tarrawi in NSW. The landscape, once entirely pastoral, now includes a mix of production-focused properties and is managed to restore and protect its conservation and heritage values.
Calperum and Taylorville Stations are part of the Bookmark Mallee that covers more than one million hectares of continuous native vegetation and is home to a diverse array of plants and animals.
OUR LIVING LANDSCAPE
The Bookmark Mallee stretches from Waikerie, SA, to Scotia and Nanya in NSW. This landscape, once entirely pastoral, is now a mix of production-focused properties and conservation areas, such as Calperum and Taylorville, which are managed to restore and protect their natural and heritage values.
The area is dominated by mallee (Eucalyptus species) and is designated as critical habitat for the endangered Black-eared Miner and Malleefowl (Leipoa ocellata). In fact, the Mallee Bird Community of the Murray Darling Depression is federally listed as an endangered ecological community.
The Bookmark Mallee extends to the banks of the Murray River, encompassing the Black Box (E. largiflorens) and Red Gum (E. camaldulensis) woodlands of the floodplains. This floodplain is recognized as an internationally significant wetland, known as the Riverland Ramsar site.
Semi-arid woodlands, dominated by non-Eucalypt tree species, form an ecotone between the mallee and floodplain communities. These areas have suffered disproportionate damage due to clearance for watering points and timber resources.
Many active pastoral properties, primarily sheep farms, still operate adjacent to the conservation areas within the Bookmark Mallee. These properties have significant ecological and economic value to the region. Our neighbouring land managers face a wide range of ecological and economic challenges that threaten the health, productivity, and ecological values of their land.
Through the Living Landscapes initiative, we are working collaboratively with neighbouring landholders to deliver landscape-scale conservation and restoration over 1 million hectares.
Our Partners
River Murray and Mallee Aboriginal Corporation
Murraylands and Riverland Landscape Board
National Parks and Wildlife Service SA
Australian Wildlife Conservancy
BirdLife Australi
Federation University
NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service
Trees for Life
Zoos SA
Theory into practice in a real-world setting
Evidence-based landscape management is our guiding philosophy at the Australian Landscape Trust. This describes the explicit and thoughtful use of the best available evidence to determine management actions. Converting scientific knowledge into conservation practice can sometimes be difficult, with ecologists and land managers often having the same goals but speaking different “languages”. At the Australian Landscape Trust our ecologists and land managers work closely together, and are, in fact, sometimes the same people!
Through research programs, we study how these management activities contribute to broader landscape objectives, and/or how they can be refined to deliver better outcomes. We believe collaboration is the key to success, and have active research partnerships with universities, government and other conservation NGOs. The result is high quality scientific research, the foundation of our evidence-based landscape management. This work also generates knowledge that can be applied to many other Australian ecosystems.
Truly integrated landscape management
The management of this landscape has, like in most areas of Australia, focused on specific management issues, and so has not achieved truly integrated landscape management. Although programs to address common threats across the whole landscape occur (e.g. control of introduced species) they are still generally focused on the needs of specific ecological communities not the landscape as a whole. The consequence is management that is piecemeal and which fails to capitalise on the synergistic improvements that could be achieved at the landscape scale by a more holistic approach to management and the research that guides it.
Evidence-based landscape management
The Australian Landscape Trust, in partnership with others, has been working to develop a landscape-scale conceptual model of this system and the evidence-based management required to protect and restore it. The approach taken to develop this evidence-based landscape management has built on the on-going community-focused management. Through research programs, such as the Ian Potter Foundation Early-Career Ecology Program and the Calperum Supersite, it will study how these management activities contribute to broader landscape objectives, and/or how they can be refined to better deliver outcomes at the landscape-scale. The result will be high quality scientific research that will produce evidence-based landscape management for the recovery of this ecologically significant, but degraded landscape. The project will also produce a model for creating effective evidence-based landscape management that could be applied to many other Australian ecosystems.
Our current restoration projects
Recovery of the Calperum Floodplain through Environmental Watering
The Australian Landscape Trust (ALT) has partnered with the Commonwealth Environmental Water Office to implement a five-year (2020–2025) restoration program for the Calperum Floodplain. By combining environmental watering, controlling total grazing pressure, and targeted revegetation, we are working to restore the wetlands, flora, and fauna of the Riverland Ramsar site.