Revegetation at Lake Wivenhoe, South-East Queensland
Fast facts
- Location: Lake Wivenhoe
- Focus area: Over 130 ha of former cleared grazing land immediately adjacent to water storage
- Revegetation: 186,000 trees planted on seven sites around Lake Wivenhoe
- Project collaborators: Seqwater and CO2 Australia
- Outcomes:
- diversified values and significance of Lake Wivenhoe
- improved buffer function to prevent pollutants reaching the storage
- increased resilience of buffer land to climate change impacts
- restored core koala habitat and habitat for local wildlife and threatened species
- Project period: Planning, planting and maintenance to occur from 2020–2026
Through carbon farming activity, this project will revegetate areas of previously cleared grazing land in the buffer area to Lake Wivenhoe, South East Queensland’s largest drinking water supply.
The project will link existing riparian habitat and increase the amount and quality of habitat available for koalas and threatened species like the glossy black cockatoo. Sites have also been selected to maximise connectivity between existing remnant vegetation areas. In addition to glossy black cockatoo habitat, the project will deliver critical habitat for vulnerable or endangered species including the squatter pigeon (southern) and red goshawk.
The project includes environmental plantings within the Somerset-Lake Wivenhoe Nature Refuge, representing important habitat stepping-stones in South-east Queensland’s largest biodiversity corridor, linking the Brisbane Valley Riparian Corridor with the D’Aguilar Range.
Seqwater owns less than 5 per cent of the catchment of Lake Wivenhoe and is actively working with farmers and landholders in the catchment to minimise the risk of poor water quality runoff into the lake. Through this project and its other land management activities, Seqwater is actively improving the management of the land it owns as the immediate buffer to the lake.
Video: Lake Wivenhoe Project
The Land Restoration Fund has invested in a collaborative project with Seqwater to restore native vegetation around Wivenhoe Dam. The video discusses the project and outlines its benefits to the conservation of koalas and other threatened species.
The Land Restoration Fund is investing in a collaborative project with Seqwater to restore native vegetation around Wivenhoe Dam. The project is being delivered by a contractor, CO2 Australia, and will involve planting more than 150 000 trees over seven sites covering more than 170 hectares around the dam’s edge.
The environmental plantings delivered through the Wivenhoe project will buffer and extend core koala habitat areas around Wivenhoe Dam, supporting the state’s interest in the conservation of that iconic species.
Working with the Land Restoration Fund, we are restoring an ex-paddock, ex-grazing land to the forest and the regional ecosystem that it once was.
The project will provide continual habitat for koalas, so historically there’s been grazed patches, or cleared patches, within the Wivenhoe Dam catchment. By restoring these areas, and intensively managing the pests, it will really help connect and support the population of koalas in the region.
We are out here with a team of 10 people, we’re planting 20,000 trees a day. Its really nice when we get to do a project like this with such significance both for Seqwater and animal habitat.
The carbon credits from the project will help defray the costs. The Land Restoration Fund in return for its investment, will receive an estimated 39,000 Australian Carbon Credit Units from the project in its first 18 years; that’s worth about half a million dollars in today’s currency, and represents a new cost-effective model for the delivery of new habitat for threatened species; and for Seqwater represents a new cost-effective model for catchment improvement to support their water quality objectives.
The Wivenhoe project is an innovative new model for delivering priority co-benefits for Queensland.
For more information visit the Land Restoration Fund website.
The video and transcript were recorded around 2021.