Landcare
What is Landcare?
What are the key
Characteristics of Landcare?
What are the benefits of Landcare?
What is a Landcare Group?
What is the origin of Landcare?
Landcare in
the Southern Appalachians
LOSRC and Landcare
Bruce Lloyd Visit
Landcare Meeting - October 2005
Landcare
Landcare is a conservation movement that brings local
communities, private corporations and government agencies
together to support hands-on action to promote sustainable
land and water management. Landcare combines the
following:
-
personal responsibility for the environment
-
“neighbors helping neighbors” via community-based
volunteer groups
-
integrated, scientific management of working lands
-
good group process
-
ecosystem maintenance and restoration
-
corporate funding of conservation projects
Key Characteristics of
Landcare
·
Neighbors
helping neighbors – literal neighbors or “communities of
interest”
·
Personal
responsibility and group ownership -- Each person feels
personal responsibility for care of the land. Landcare
groups identify their own problems and craft their own
solutions.
·
Scientific
approach – with help from landscape architects, soil
conservationists, biologists, etc.
·
Whole-systems
thinking -- an ecosystem-based or “integrated natural
resource management” approach. None of the neighbors acting
alone can solve the problems. This leads to a “We’re all in
this together” mindset.
·
Effective
facilitation and coordination – via landcare
coordinators/facilitators
·
Multiple
funding streams -- with accountability and
flexibility
·
Representative
organization structure – supporting broad ownership of
decisions and a high level of trust up and down the line
·
Apolitical and
non-partisan approaches – “middle of the road,” leading to a
low level of divisiveness and strong support from “all sides
of the aisle”
Benefits of Landcare
Putting
communities in charge of their own local environment leads
to preservation of the natural assets upon which rural
economies depend. Landcare is highly replicable, and is a
key element of sustainable development at the local,
regional, state and national levels. Landcare specifically
adds value to rural communities in the following areas:
·
A
scientific, documented approach to environmental management
of working lands (farms, forests) and urban lands can add
economic value to the land (increased productivity & sales
price, reduced environmental liability, etc.)
·
Landcare draws corporate resources into land management via
national branding of its logo
·
For every dollar of cash invested in projects, landcare
leverages $3.50 in volunteer labor
·
Personal responsibility for the land -- and grassroots
ownership of challenges and solutions -- builds a societal
land ethic or stewardship ethic. This in turn
provides broad public support for preservation and
restoration of natural assets
Landcare Groups
A
landcare group is a community-based group of volunteers
working on conservation projects that contribute to
environmental, social and economic outcomes. Landcare
groups in Australia select and carry out their own projects,
with funding assistance from corporations, government and
other sources.
Origins
Begun
in Australia in 1989 to restore severely damaged ecosystems
“one watershed at a time,” landcare now is carried out by
some 6,000 community landcare and coastcare groups in
coastal, rural and urban areas of Australia. Eighty-five
percent of Australians recognize the official landcare logo.
http://www.landcareaustralia.com.au/
Landcare in
the Southern Appalachians
Developing financially viable local landcare groups and
getting existing landcare-like groups to sponsor landcare
conservation projects in the southern Appalachian region
represents an opportunity to build widespread support for
the ecological restoration and protection of the southern
Appalachian landscape.
An
effort is underway to start a landcare movement in the
United States. Land-of-Sky Regional Council is part of that
effort.
Website
of the Council for US Landcare:
http://www.landcareus.org/
What
has LOSRC done
regarding landcare?
Land-of-Sky Regional Council’s involvement in landcare began
in May 2004, when we hosted a visit of James McKee (Chairman
of the Toowoomba Landcare Group in Queensland, Australia)
and Mike Brubaker (CEO of the Council for US Landcare, one
of two national groups working to start a US landcare
movement). We pulled together a group of about 25-30 land
management, land trust, forestry, agricultural and
conservation representatives and asked the question, “Could
the Australian landcare model – or something like it – add
value to our efforts to get conservation on the ground in
western North Carolina?” The group’s basic answer to this
question was “Yes – landcare can add value to our efforts.”
Summary of James McKee meeting
Since
that meeting, a group from our region went to Queensland,
Australia to study landcare, and LOSRC has written several
grants to attempt to establish some seed funding for
landcare projects.
Article on Queensland Trip
Landcare
Grant Applications:
Landcare Riparian Management Demonstration (Proposal to
Pigeon River Fund)
Landcare ─ A Movement to Re-energize Land Stewardship in
North Carolina (Proposal to Z. Smith Reynolds
Foundation)
Creating Place-Based Jobs for Rural North Carolina:
Prosperity through Stewardship of Natural Assets
(Economic Innovation Grant proposal to NC Rural Economic
Development Center)
Bruce Lloyd Visit
Former
Australian Landcare Council Chairman and Minister of
Parliament Bruce Lloyd and his wife Heather visited
Asheville on October 3, 2005 to assist Land-of-Sky Regional
Council (LOSRC) to start a landcare movement in the area.
 |
Pictured from L to R: Heather
Lloyd, Bett Stroud, Bruce Lloyd, Susan Roderick,
Michael Morgan and Jim Stokoe visiting the Town of
Weaverville's Main Street Nature Park. |
Two field site visits and
two sit-down meetings led Lloyd to see opportunities to form
three distinct types of landcare groups or affiliations in
western North Carolina:
- Urban landcare – neighborhhod
associations could conduct landcare projects, or even
form landcare groups; townspeople could form landcare
groups to control invasive plants and do other
conservation work.
- Rural landcare – coalitions of
watershed associations, Resource Conservation &
Development Councils, and Soil & Water Conservation
Districts, with assistance from the USDA Natural
Resources Conservation Service could support
watershed-based volunteer groups of farmers and other
rural landowners.
- Indigenous landcare – the Eastern
Band of Cherokee Indians on Qualla Boundary could do
landcare projects on a variety of conservation needs.
Bruce’s visit helped LOSRC advance the
cause of local landcare in several ways:
- Providing an impetus for meetings
at which a number of new landcare stakeholders were
informed about landcare;
- Bringing to these meetings the
authenticity, authority and experience of his many years
of Australian landcare involvement;
- Identifying specific local
landcare opportunities.
LOSRC is grateful to Bruce and his wife
Heather for taking time out of their cross-country vacation
to make this significant contribution to a landcare movement
in our region.
October 3, 2005 Landcare Meeting
The
best opportunity to realize the benefits of landcare in our
region appears to be for existing groups already doing good
conservation work to conduct some projects using the
landcare model. Some new landcare groups also could form if
groups of volunteers wish to do so. A landcare
stakeholders’ meeting was held on short notice on October 3,
2005 to take advantage of Bruce Lloyd’s one-day visit. The
purpose of that meeting was to discuss what kinds of
arrangements and collaboration will be needed to get some
projects going, and to see who is interested. This meeting
was intended to serve as a model for a larger workshop to be
held in the near future, in which we attempt to engage a
much broader group of conservation stakeholders.
Functions
and roles needed to support a local landcare movement
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