Landcare Week celebrates Tamworth members focused on regeneration

"Sustainability was the goal a little while ago, now it's all about regeneration," president Wayne Chaffey said.

For the past 34 years, Landcare Australia has led the charge in supporting Australians as they tackle critical environmental and agricultural issues.

Landcare Week running August 7 to 13 is an annual celebration acknowledging those who are actively restoring, enhancing and protecting the natural environment in their community.

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The organisation first formed in the New England region in Manilla as one of the earliest groups after former prime minister Bob Hawke initiated its funding, Mr Chaffey said.

A coalition between Manilla and Tamworth then started, and the Tamworth group is now an umbrella term.

"It used to be seen just as 'those tree planters', and that was a really big job initially, but now it has a much broader role," Mr Chaffey said.

"We're all about focusing on getting all members of the community just to look at and learn about and be involved in activities in our environment.

"We've got landscape that's been damaged by inappropriate land use over the last 200 plus years."

Landcare has programs focused on what changes need to be made in a climate with an increasing temperature.

In the Tamworth region, the science says there will be decreased rain, but when it does fall, it will be random and intense, Mr Chaffey said.

The group has been working on figuring out how to keep water in the upper reaches of the catchment, rather than it turning into a torrent of floodwater that quickly disappears, he said.

"We want to soak it up through the soils, have it in the catchment, so that it leaches out slowly into the river systems to keep them at a moderate flow for a longer period of time," he said.

NSW Labor committed to more than doubling the funding for Landcare to $59 million in the next four years.

Projects like landscape re-hydration, and water and landscape initiatives are ongoing, Mr Chaffey said.

"There's lots of things people can do to make things better as we do approach this warming environment, rather than be scared or worried," he said.

The theme for Landcare Week 2023 is: 'be inspired, be empowered, be a landcarer'.

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