2022 Enviro Grant Recipients showcase custodianship and community collaboration
As we prepare to open the 2023 Northern Rivers Grants Program, we’ve been in touch and received incredible updates from last year’s environmental grant recipients. Their progress and impact provides hope, as the clarion call from the UN’s climate change report, that was released last Monday, confirming that radical action needs to be taken on a global level for humanity and the planet, rings far and wide…
The work of these following not-for-profits – who were granted a cumulative $78k - like so many inside and out of this region, showcase custodianship and while varied, their collective impact has a compounding ripple effect contributing to the care and prioritisation the Northern Rivers has for the environment.
GREEN HEROS
The grey nurse shark and the critically endangered Hawksbill Turtle are two species that had not officially been identified as living in the waters surrounding Jungarra Ngarrian (Cook Island Aquatic Reserve - 600m off the Tweed Coast’s Fingal Headland) until 2022. However, through our funding of camera equipment to Green Heroes, aiding underwater baseline surveys of the flora and fauna, it enabled the not-for-profit, in collaboration with Traditional Owners and their families to identify that these two species in fact, call the reserve home! Through this observation and subsequent campaigning, national in-water guidelines for marine turtle interactions have been successfully implemented to protect them.
BANGALOW KOALAS
With the 2022 Northern Rivers floods impacting the restoration and regeneration work of Bangalow Koalas, our funding enabled 10,451 trees to be replanted across Richmond Valley, Kyogle, Lismore and Ballina shires to rebuild the wildlife corridor.
“With a region traumatised by devastating flooding events, the inGrained Foundation’s funding allowed us to offer landholders who had lost everything, including their recently planted trees, hope to move forwards, and to carry on. Without hope, there is no future.”
Linda Sparrow – Bangalow Koalas
ZERO EMISSIONS BYRON
Using the funding to create and implement a Good Fire Restoration Plan and supporting workshops in collaboration with local Indigenous community and landholders, Zero Emissions Byron sees the development of their project as a seminal piece of work for this region and beyond. This comes as communities recognise the need for ‘cool burning’ of landscapes – something that First Nations people have done for thousands of years.
“Support from Ingrained Foundation has advanced the development of Jagun Alliance to deliver cultural fire services in our region to revive our cultural knowledge and practices, protect special places and species that need good fire and reduce the risk of destructive wildfire.”
Dr Anne Buchanan Stuart – ZEB
RAINFOREST 4 x HALFCUT
Working together to restore and protect the rainforest and its ecosystems for the benefit of wildlife, traditional owners, people, climate and the planet, Rainforest 4 and Halfcut are planting 3,000 trees in collaboration with local Indigenous and non-indigenous volunteers in damaged creek and river ecosystems in Federal and Mullumbimby.
Despite the dire warnings from the UN Report around the urgent need for us to transition from fossil fuels and the fact that this, in large part, sits along way upstream, it is local initiatives like these that are including the community that are beacons, illuminating the path towards a world where we are a part of nature, not apart from it and with that comes the responsibility to show up and care.
“If we have any hope of a thriving planet [..] it is going to take all of us doing what we can with the resources we have.”
Yvon Chouinard
