Presentations delivered at the Inaugural Reef Rescue Showcase held last month in Cairns are now available. The presentations include:

• A focus on best-practice science and engagement | NQ Dry Tropics
• Strong partnerships and sound delivery model engaging cane growers in the Lower Burdekin | NQ Dry Tropics
• An overview of Reef Rescue | Mike Berwick
• Partnerships for Practice Change | Fitzroy Basin Association
• Grains BMP program - boosting productivity and reef water quality | Grains BMP officers and participants
• What we understand and what we need to understand better: the change in research focus | Hugh Yorkston, GBRMPA
• Underpinning science to target improved practice change | Fitzroy Basin Association
• Industry-wide Reef Rescue projects - big picture projects helping out regional growers and graziers
• Milking the P's to change: powerful partnerships using performing programs, precision planning and proven practices | Rick Kowitz, Queensland Dairyfarmers' Organisation
• Horticulture: in partnership with the Reef | Growcom
• Healthy Country: managing the land for healthy waterways - a case study from SEQ | SEQ Catchments
• Reef Rescue success in the Wet Tropics | Terrain

The Fitzroy Basin Association has been working diligently with landholders across the region to address a range of factors impacted by, and impacting on climate change. Programs designed to increase the long-term resilience of all natural assets and systems to climate change are currently being run on a range of levels, from species to ecosystems, and paddocks to catchments.

Major coverage

NatureAssist is for rural Queensland landholders to help sustainably manage their land, conditional upon them entering into a nature refuge agreement. NatureAssist is a competitive market-based incentive scheme that gives landholders throughout rural Queensland the opportunity to tender for financial assistance to carry out on-ground management actions that will maintain or enhance their property’s conservation values.  Expressions of interest must be submitted by 16 March 2009 (5pm AEST). Landholders can express their interest by completing a simple one-page expression of interest form available at www.epa.qld.gov.au/naturerefuges or by calling the EPA Customer Service Centre on 1300 130 372.
 

More than 80 attendees at a lantana control field day in the Boyne Valley gained improved knowledge and skills needed to combat the weed.

Attached is an example of an invitation to an event ran by FBA - a community and landholders forum.

FBA put out a Q&A Information Bulletin as an outcome of the Flood Recovery Forum they ran in 2008. See attached.

The idea was also raised from the forum of having an online community related common interests raised at the flood forum.

A study funded by the Fitzroy Basin Association (FBA) has found dolphins along the Capricorn Coast may be in danger of disappearing from the region.

FBA’s Coastal and Marine Coordinator Shane Westley said it was the perfect opportunity to highlight the plight of the Pacific Humpback and Snubfin dolphins. The dolphins are both listed as rare under the Queensland Nature Conservation Act 1992.