The International River Foundation has announced that RiverSmart’s Macquarie River Program is one of three finalists in its prestigious Australian River Prize for 2015 with the winner to be announced at the upcoming 18th International River Symposium in Brisbane from September 21-23.
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CEO of RiverSmart, Dr Bill Phillips is very proud to be a finalist in the internationally-recognised award.
“It provides wonderful recognition for all the hard work done by so many people over the past seven and a bit years,” he said.
The Australian River Prize recognises excellence and innovation in river management.
“Even if we don’t go on to win the award, this recognition of our work is a huge boost for our program as it tells us that independent experts have looked closely at what we’re doing and have rated it very highly,” Dr Phillips said.
The Macquarie RiverSmart program was launched in May 2008 with the support of the then Central West Catchment Management Authority.
One of the earliest activities undertaken by RiverSmart was a paddle-athon that has now been taken on by the WomDonNom paddle club and grown into a hugely popular event each year.
There have been a range of education-related activities as well, such as the outdoor and floating classrooms, the launch of platypus-watch and publication of the How to be a RiverSmart Farmer Guide.
Then there have been several community events such as movies by the river, the Water Cycle event, the Lazy River Feast and the Marshter Chef night at ‘Willie Retreat’ in the Macquarie Marshes.
In December 2011, Macquarie River Trails was launched and since then has seen trails for fishing, bird watching, education, river bedz and tucker added to bring the total number to 11 trails with over 100 businesses involved and close to 200 attractions across the region being promoted. Linked to Macquarie River Trails have been the annual Plein Air Art events and the Macquarie River Fishing Classic; the latter now in its fourth year.
“While we’ve done a lot of things designed to get people to turn and embrace the river, to become stronger custodians of it, we’ve also been working closely with landholders along the river through our federally-funded NatureLinks program,” Dr Phillips said.
“This was helped by the detailed mapping of the river we commissioned in 2009 and now sees weed and erosion control work being undertaken by 26 landholders along 110 river-kilometres, mostly between Narromine and Warren.
"Along this same stretch of river we’ve help fund a co-ordinated fox and feral pig control program being undertaken by Local Land Services in partnership with nearly 30 landholders covering an area of approximately 70,000 hectares.”