Landcare volunteers honoured for helping to save threatened species

Janet Heffernan, who has spent two decades as a volunteer with the Gunning District Landcare group, was honoured last week with a Highly Commended in the Women in Landcare award.

Her award was one of many distributed to like-minded environmental volunteers across the Southern Tablelands for services to their communities and work on helping to save endangered species.

For Janet, who lives at Dalton near Yass, it’s her passion. A teacher by trade, working to better the environment in which she lives, and others in need of help, is part of her make-up.

Her latest project is to help the endangered southern pygmy perch, after the tiny fish were found in Oolong Creek near her home.

With numbers in severe decline because of carp and redfin, Janet has been working with fish experts to fence off creek areas where they’ve been found and work with local farmers to rehabilitate them.

It’s yet another of her citizen science projects that Janet and her Landcare colleagues do because they need to be done.

“It was nice to be highly commended,” she said, “but I genuinely enjoy what I do. You don’t do it for recognition.

“As a volunteer, you can choose what you want to do and it’s not onerous work,” – but can be a little challenging if you’re on fish watch during a Southern Tablelands winter.

“Caring for threatened species has always been my thing,” she said. “I worked at the Mundoonan Nature Reserve for about 12 months doing monthly bird surveys. We saw the spotted quail thrush which was in decline.”

Born in Tumut, Janet trained as a teacher in Canberra but made her home in the hamlet of Dalton about 20 years ago, which, when she moved in, boasted a population of about 100. Today that figure is about twice that.

She estimates she’s planted more than 60,000 trees and shrubs around the village since she’s been there.

Her goal, she said, was simple. “I just want to leave the world in a better place. It’s up to us when it comes to what we do and how we do it. Some people play golf or tennis, I do Landcare because it can also be a social thing because you can be with like-minded people who just want to help.”

The award was the culmination of a swag of honours for environmentalists in the Southern Tablelands at the 2024 awards. More than 50 volunteers from across the Yass Valley were recognised.

Chair of the Yass Area Network of Landcare Groups, Kath McGuirk, said the group was thrilled to have the work of volunteers recognised at the state level.

“One of the early highlights was a jointly organised climate change event in Yass in 2018,” she said.

“Over 220 people turned up to hear top speakers on the subject, and it was standing room only.

“Land managers bear the brunt of climatic changes, so there is real motivation to understand the projections and to be proactive in protecting the environment, farming businesses and our rural lifestyles.”

She said Landcare groups in the Yass region were keen to take meaningful local action, so they initiated the Climate Ready Revegetation Project.

More than 50 volunteers were involved in the early stages, setting up the project, undertaking climate and plant analysis, growing plants in the Landcare nurseries and hosting planting trials.

Team member Elizabeth Goodfellow said Landcare’s revegetation work was critical, but not all native plants would survive and thrive in our future climate.

“Our Climate Ready project aims to make sure that the plants used in revegetation have the best chance of surviving well into the future so they can contribute to biodiverse and resilient landscapes,” she said.