For Nerida Croker, the fight to save flora and fauna in the Upper Lachlan Shire is a deeply personal one.
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Nerida, who has been chair of the Fullerton Hadley Landcare group for the last decade, has a connection with the livestock farmers and property owners spanning around 4622 hectares of pastoral land and remnant bushland involved in the Bushconnect project.
As part of the initiative, Fullerton Hadley Landcare coordinated with a team of 20 rural landholders planting hundreds of species of trees.
Together they created shelterbelts planting native species of fauna that would connect nearly all of the properties along the Fullerton Road.
In all, a team of 20 planted hundreds of trees and shrubs which would aid the restoration of native habitat.
It is an ongoing project with major works being completed in 2013 and 2018, this has led to wildlife surveys and mapping projects around the Fullerton Hadley area.
At times, the project used the assistance of outside groups including The Green Army for tree planting, and it supported the local nursery Wongadee Farm Trees at Laggan.
They worked to infill previous plantings which helped focus the spending of the grant on tubestock and tree guards, rather than fencing new areas.
They grew a mixture of tree and shrub species including Blakely's Red Gum, Ribbon Gum, Casuarinas, Grevillias, Acacia black wood, and red stem wattle.
"My goal was to promote sites for bird monitoring groups and to assist with the protection of native grasses and pastures by reducing the impact of wind and soils and erosion control during times of heavy rain and create awareness of the importance of maintaining and protecting groundcover in control of weeds," Nerida said.
Shelterbelts also provide protection for stock and manage and improve pastures, she said.
In 2018, the Fullerton Hadley area was heavily impacted by the drought and lost some of its plantings.
"They've had a lot of dry times so we might not have got as good a strike rate as we had hoped," Nerida says.
"People who were very diligent and put a lot of work into preparation and maintained it had good results," Nerida says.
Since the partnership was established the Fullerton Hadley Landcare group has had many opportunities to extend its footprint in the area.
"We have invested in a mapping project, the idea of that is to map all these sites onto a database... in preparation for future funding applications," Nerida says.
As well, ecologists, Peter and Judy Smith surveyed the area for native species establishing a base for any further surveys.
In 2000, the Fullerton Hadley Landcare branch was established and around 10-years later formed a partnership with the K2W Glideways Connect project which has provided funding for projects including reestablishing green corridors and weed control.
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