Ponds aren’t just for ducks (Landscape rehydration through Waterponding)
Welcome to the Cattle Station Classroom Podcast. In today’s lesson we are going to be learning about the landscape rehydration method of Waterponding.
To learn about waterponding, we are joined by Jardine Macdonald, the Program Manager for Rangelands Natural Resource Management.
Jards is a hydrogeologist who comes from an environmental consulting and mining background, and did research on groundwater recharge and catchment water balance dynamics in the Pilbara.
Starting with Rangelands early 2019, he took up the project management role for the West Kimberley LCDC Smart Farms grant project ‘Brining soil back to life through waterponding’, funded by the National Landcare Program.
The West Kimberley LCDC setup this project with collaborative support of Mel McDonald (previously Rangelands NRM) and Matt Fletcher (DPIRD), building on both Mel and Matt’s waterponding work with guru Ray Thompson and Kimberley stations since 2009.
The West Kimberley LCDC, Rangelands NRM and DPIRD collaborated to complete a month of waterponding with the NSW pros Ray Thompson and Ben McKillop, across West Kimberley LCDC stations at the end of 2019.
As part of this project, the West Kimberley LCDC also produced a video on how to build waterponds which was uploaded to Youtube April this year on the Rangelands NRM channel.
Link to Video: https://youtu.be/UJSrC8uuM98
Link to Webinar recording and presentation slides: https://futurebeef.com.au/knowledge-centre/building-waterponds-with-a-road-grader/
This podcast is brought you by Central Station and hosted by Steph Coombes, BSc Agriculture (Hons.), MSc Agricultural Communication & Education.
Find over 1200 stories from Outback Cattle Stations at www.centralstation.net.au.
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