Great Southern Landscapes

Whole of Paddock Rehabilitation

Whole of Paddock Rehabilitation is an incentive-based program that assists farmers to restore degraded or cleared land on their properties, increasing productivity, providing shade and shelter for livestock, and creating large areas of new habitat for native wildlife.

3,640ha

Land revegetated

122

Landholders involved

1,520 km

Direct seeding

13km

Fencing installed

25 ha

Average paddock size

148

Project sites

How it works

Through WOPR, farmers can volunteer to restore a degraded or cleared paddock over 10 hectares of size, by planting a broad range of native trees and shrubs in widely spaced belts across the land.

To rest the paddock, sheep and cows are temporarily excluded for a period of 5 years. This means that little or no fencing is required, a major point of difference from other incentive programs.

During this time the landholder receives a stewardship payment to compensate them for some of the loss of production they encounter while the trees and shrubs are growing. When the new vegetation is large enough to withstand browsing, livestock can be reintroduced to the new pasture and sustainably grazed.

Progress

To date, WOPR has engaged over 120 landholders to restore more than 140 sites across New South Wales and Western Australia, reinvigorating paddocks with significant benefits for farming production as well as the environment. Typical WOPR paddocks host between 20 to 30 different species of birds at any one time, many of which are small insectivorous species that perform important pest control services around the farm.

Many farmers are seeing the benefits, like Dave Hewlett in Yass, who has found that ewes with lambs now actively seek out the windbreaks, and the lambing percentage for twinning ewes has increased to more than 140% since WOPR.

“We are very happy with the results and we can see an improvement in the landscape as well as the bottom line.” – Tony and Jenny Magee, Rye Park

“The funding from Greening Australia didn’t cover the whole loss, but it went a long way towards it and we’re happy to put a bit in financially to make sure it’s a success, because we get a big farming advantage out of it.” –Chris and Margot Shannon

Project Lead

Graham Fifield

Land and Restoration Lead

Fascinated by the environment from a young age, Graham has worked with Greening Australia for more than 15 years. After studying environmental science and resource management, he completed his honours degree which focused on the relationship between sheep and trees on farms. On graduating he was employed by Greening Australia, and today works as our Land and Restoration Lead in the ACT and NSW.