Funds: $1,890,000
Source: NSW Environmental Trust
Contract: 2008/USM/0023
The High Country Urban Biodiversity project (HiCUB) was the largest urban environmental project undertaken on the Northern Tablelands. Four Councils - Walcha, Uralla, Armidale-Dumaresq and Guyra - contracted Southern New England Landcare (SNEL) to deliver the project in the urban towns and villages of Walcha, Uralla, Kentucky, Armidale, Ebor, Guyra and Ben Lomond between 2009 and 2012. This unique Council-Community partnership delivered significant on-ground works, engaged broad sections of the community and build trust and capacity among Councils, community organisations and the broader communities.
The Final Report provides a picture of what the HiCUB project achieved, although the diversity and complexity of the project prevents a full record of everything that happened. The written report is supplemented by a video documentary, made in the last 10 months of the project, to provide a different medium for reporting on the project. This final report is also supplemented by previous reports submitted to the NSW Environmental Trust, particularly the Progress Report (December, 2010).
The project was established in 2008-09 by a large group of stakeholders through the project application stage and then through the development of the Business Plan. The Business Plan and Program Logic (Appendix 1a and 1b) set out five objectives and 18 outcomes for the project.
The five objectives were:
- Improve the ecological health of urban riparian lands and bush lands including Ecologically Endangered Communities: reduce weeds; increase in area and quality of native vegetation; erosion remediation; and improve habitat linkages at landscape scale.
- Improve the effectiveness of councils and community effort toward environmental rehabilitation through improved integration, collaboration and greater knowledge transfer between councils and stakeholders.
- Monitor, evaluate and implement improvement in approaches to rehabilitation of urban areas
- Increase long-term participation in urban ecosystem rehabilitation targeting community volunteerism and investment from private and government sources
- Improve resource use efficiency - increase utilization of council mulch; increase uptake of rebates for rainwater tanks, and alternative energy technology; decrease nutrient load in town water supply.
