Bulimba Creek Catchment Coordinating Committee

Project Profile

Issues

Bulimba Creek Catchment Coordinating Committee (B4C) has taken unprecedented steps for not-for-profit groups in Queensland, by designing and constructing a community driven educational centre that aims to instigate sustainable behavioural change household by household. This unique project is firmly rooted to its natural resource management origins but also weaves the ideas of what it means to be a good environmental citizen into the urban fabric of society.

Project Detail

Bulimba Creek Catchment Coordinating Committee (B4C) has been nominated for a National Landcare Award for its development and implementation of effective strategies to engage the community in Natural Resource Management activities.

B4C’s overall philosophy is not just about raising awareness and fostering understanding; it has been designed to encourage action. B4C utilises a myriad of awareness raising tools and exercises to create awareness of NRM issues in the catchment and to bring about behavioural change in stakeholder groups, whether they are individual householders or government organisations.

The organisation has instigated a wide range of community activities including: open days, guided bus tours throughout the catchment, a community nursery producing tube-stock of local native plants, and has organised corporate plantings.

B4C works with more than 43 Bushcare and environmental groups in the protection and enhancement of Bulimba Creek and other key environmental areas in the South East of Brisbane. B4C also has an environmental services unit, which forms partnerships with government and industry to deliver environmental outcomes to Brisbane’s green areas. Through these partnerships more than half a million trees have been planted in the catchment and surrounding areas.

These plantings have helped address flood mitigation, bank erosion, weed invasion, litter control and water quality, as well as creating essential habitat and fauna movement corridors. They are currently involved with more than 50 sites throughout the catchment and have people working on these projects seven days a week.

As part of its strategy to engage in a diverse range of activities, the B4C has promoted the protection of urban waterways and bushlands, the creation of habitat and wildlife corridors and ecologically sustainable development.

In 2009, B4C was involved in the acquisition of approximately 100 ha of private land that dramatically increases the viability of key environmental corridors in the lower catchment. These recent successes are in addition to the 426 ha that B4C’s had previously worked to secure for public green uses. These areas include Whites Hill, Mt Gravatt, Salvin and Spring Creek, Doboy, Tingalpa, Nungubba and Runcorn Wetlands.

Bulimba Creek Catchment Coordinating Committee (B4C) is one of 88 finalists in the National Landcare Awards to be announced in Canberra on 24 June 2010.  Commencing in 1991, the Awards celebrate the achievements of individuals and groups that make a valuable contribution to the land and coast where they live and work.

Photography

B4C - Healthy Food Garden