Farewell Lori Gould

After 15 years working with Greening Australia in Canberra, Lori Gould is taking on some new challenges.

Many of you will have met Lori over the 15 years she’s been working with Greening Australia in Canberra. She has been instrumental in many of our landscape and river restoration projects, such as Boorowa River Recovery, Whole of Paddock Rehabilitation, GreenGrid, and Rivers of Carbon. Lori is sadly leaving us at the end of July to take up a position at Jerrabomberra Wetlands, and to start her own consulting business – GrassRoots Environmental. Her passion and expertise will be sorely missed, and we wish her all the best in her future endeavours.

Lori started her career in environmental management in 1995 when she joined the ACT Parks and Conservation Service as a ranger. Lori’s background and passion is in river restoration and management, and this has been the focus of many of her successful projects. When she first started with GA in 2000, she worked on the Bidgee Banks project which engaged 262 land managers in the rehabilitation of 263km of river in the Murrumbidgee Catchment. The project was highly successful, and went on to win a Banksia Award in 2002 and a UN Award in 2003.

The Boorowa River Recovery project started small, with an aim to improve water quality in the Boorowa River – a tributary of the Lachlan River north of Canberra. Under Lori’s leadership, it grew to become a $2.2 million flagship riparian restoration project which succeeded in bringing the community together to restore over 80km of the river. The project also included the translocation of endangered Southern Pygmy Perch into Pudman Creek, a tributary of the Boorowa River. The population is now established and breeding successfully, thanks to the rehabilitation works along the creek.

The environmental and social impact of Boorowa River Recovery has been monitored over the last 6 years, which formed the basis of Lori’s Masters thesis in 2013. The project has received many awards (including being a finalist for the national Riverprize in 2014) and also laid the foundations for the current Rivers of Carbon project which aims to build on and link up previous work in the southern Tablelands. Rivers of Carbon is run in partnership with the Australian River Restoration Centre, and has already engaged over 70 landholders in new projects along 125km of streams.

Lori has also played a major role in many other projects, including our Whole of Paddock Rehabilitationprogram, and GreenGrid, a long-running partnership between Greening Australia and TransGrid. Last year, her achievements were recognised when she was awarded a fellowship with the Peter Cullen Trust.

Lori has achieved great success working with private landholders by demonstrating that production and conservation are not at odds, and finding win-win solutions to environmental issues that involve the community. In her new position at the Jerrabomberra Wetlands, Lori is looking forward to working more closely with the Canberra community.