Land for Wildlife was established in 2002 on the Central Coast of New South Wales, operating within the local government areas of Gosford City Council, Wyong Shire Council, and Lake Macquarie City Council and due to the popularity and benefits of the program has extended services to Cessnock City Council area. This program, aims to support the maintenance and enhancement of native biodiversity on private land. Through this program landholder are given information of wildlife and habitat and are provided with a Land for Wildlife sign to display on their gate.  

 Since its inception Land for Wildlife in the Central Coast and Lower Hunter has been very successful and achieved a number of positive outcomes including:

• over 250 properties registered and assessed during which landholders received advice on sustainable land management practices;
• nearly 3000 Ha of land registered with the program;
• over 2,000 Ha of natural bush retained as habitat
• 9 schools registered, conserving 14 ha of bushland and providing a unique education tool for teachers;

Bush Regeneration Team
 A 4 person Bush Regeneration Team has been able to support landholders and landholders have worked alongside the teamin order to develope skills in bush regeneration techniques and plant identification.

Regional Seedbank
The development of the regional seed bank and Wildplant Community Nursey endeavors to supply local provenance floral species to provide landholders with a good quality supply of local provenance seed. Maintaining local provenance species plays an integral role in preserving the diversity of local native floral species.

Access to the seed bank is currently limited to Land for Wildlife members who have an interest in revegetation / restoration of native vegetation on their property with local provenance seed. Landholders are required to attend one of the seed propagation workshops to show a level of commitment to propagating their free seed. Seed has been made available to landholders based on their catchment and the species collected from within that catchment, seed provenance is tracked using the Greening Australia seed supply system. Landholders have taken up this offer and are propagating their own seed for revegetation purposes. Many of the landholders assisted the seed collectors on their property and learnt skills that will enable them to collect and propagate their own seed in the future.

If you would like to be part of Land for Wildlife on the Central Coast of Lower Hunter click here to download the Central Coast and Hunter Expression of Interest Form(PDF 183Kb) and post it to CEN 

Contact:

Central Coast & Lower Hunter Regional Coordinator
Community Environment Network
PO Box 149
Ourimbah
NSW 2258

Ph:   02 43 494754
Fax: 02 4349 4755
Email: landforwildlife@cen.org.au

CEN supports the Great Eastern Ranges Inititiative