As 2021 dawns we begin by celebrating our 20th Anniversary year!
As an organisation, we have had many iterations, but our mission has remained constant: helping everyone to understand their carbon footprint and restoring degraded land here in Australia. Over this 20 year period, your donations have helped us to restore over 5,000 hectares. We know from research that many of these sites are now performing as well for habitat as intact remnant bush, with flourishing bird and insect populations.Â
“CCWA Citizen Science group has undertaken Standard Search bird surveys at 10 regeneration and 8 restoration sites in the Fitz-Stirling link. The results are now available via their presentation “What the Birds told us”. The results showed that the bird diversity in post-2011 restoration was comparable to old regeneration (remnant). All functional bird groups were present in both restoration and regeneration.”Â
Nic Dunlop, Director, CCWA Citizen Science Program, 2020
When we began 20 years ago as a project initiated through Men of the Trees (now Trillion Trees), climate change was still discussed as a future event. The future is now here, and we are currently experiencing the impact of just 1 degree of warming. We now know the effects of a changing climate on the landscape, weather and ultimately our lives. We also have the tools we need to make the changes necessary to reduce warming.
That’s why our mission to empower everyone to understand their carbon footprint is vital. We were one of the first organisations in Australia to have an online carbon calculator. Thanks to support from Lotterywest, we are currently developing a brand new calculator, with an improved experience for users and extended calculations based on the latest Australian data. We will be asking you to support and share our campaign to get everyone across Australia calculating their carbon footprint and taking steps to reduce their carbon impact. We will be announcing the launch soon, so keep an eye out in your mail!
Our work on the ground continues, too, with FIVE great projects for you to support. We have already announced our project in Nimbin NSW, which is providing a corridor between two national parks for wildlife. In today’s newsletter, you can read about another of our new projects at Tootanellup in the Great Southern. This is a project in collaboration with Green Skills in Denmark and is part of the Gondwana Link. And, we will be announcing a third new Wheatbelt project later this month! As well as these three new projects, we are continuing our work at Eurardy in collaboration with Bush Heritage Australia and our work at Brookton in the WA Wheatbelt area.Â
We are also delighted this year to be assisting the volunteers at Activate the Wheatbelt. Carbon Positive Australia will be supplying 20,000 trees for them to plant at degraded sites in the Wheatbelt.Â
We want to thank you for your support over the past twenty years, but we are also calling you to take action for the future. We need your support to continue our work. We want EVERYONE in Australia to come on the journey with us to understand their carbon footprint and reduce their impact. We believe our land needs healing and our goal is to restore 25,000 hectares of degraded land by 2025! This will not only help store 3.25m tonnes of carbon but will also create productive habitat for our native species.
The time to act is now and together we can get our climate back on track.
