Land scars:
rejuvenating Australia’s degraded agricultural and mining land
Across Australia, it is estimated that two thirds of agricultural land is degraded.
At least 80,000 mine sites remain inactive and unrehabilitated.
If you take a road trip anywhere, you will no doubt pass by seemingly endless farmland, mining pits and quarries.
At the same time, forests or woodland areas have reduced by more than a third and 50% of rainforests have been destroyed since colonisation.
This has caused mass habitat loss, threatened native species, damaged ecosystems and accelerated climate change.
So, why is unused land being left untouched and how do we solve this issue?
The Problem
Degraded land
According to the United Nations, 2 billion hectares of land are degraded in the world.
Mining and agriculture practices are designed to exploit and drain land resources for profit.
Improper farming practices and lack of vegetation lead to severe nutrient depletion, high soil salinity, contamination and erosion.
As a result, key ecosystem nutrient systems such as the carbon and nitrogen cycles are interrupted, and plants and wildlife cannot survive.
The degraded land can no longer be used for agricultural purposes and becomes unused.
Similarly, land cleared for mining is subject to erosion, loss of nutrient cycles and toxins.
If this land wasn’t cleared, these areas would historically be thriving with biodiversity, providing habitat for native wildlife and capturing carbon.
This is why land clearing is considered a key threatening process impacting the survival of native species and ecological communities.
Instead of flourishing, this land is degraded, unused, isolating habitat areas and accelerating global heating according to an issue brief written by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature.
“When land is degraded, soil carbon can be released into the atmosphere, along with nitrous oxide, making land degradation one of the biggest contributors to climate change,” the brief states.
So, how can we fix it?
Image taken by Indiana Hardwick
Image taken by Indiana Hardwick
The Solution
Image provided by Land Life
Image provided by Land Life
Well, there is an obvious solution.
Degraded land can be rejuvenated back to bushland or forest to become a new habitat and to recapture carbon, but rehabilitating damaged land is highly complex and expensive.
The plausibility of recovery must be assessed through the measurement of remaining nutrients, as well as the ability to collect seeds, grow and nurture historically native flora.
However, most degraded land is owned by farmers.
Property owners cannot use the soil for growing crops, but they can’t rehabilitate the area back to bushland either due to lack of resources or funding.
This is where Land Life steps in to restore degraded land that would otherwise not be rejuvenated.
Land Life is a restoration organisation started in the Netherlands and now based across Australia, North America and Spain.
In Australia, Land Life specialises in the restoration and reforestation of unusable degraded agricultural land.
Australian regional director for Land Life Tim Ferraro said their aim is to restore millions of hectares of degraded land without impacting the farming industry.
“What we're trying to do with our work is do what we can to get the landscape functioning again,” Mr Ferraro said.
“So, trying to set up those key ecological cycles that may have been interrupted through major disturbance like agriculture or mining.”
Funded by carbon credits, the organisation offers free restoration to property owners of degraded land or acquisitions unusable land for recovery.
There are lots of benefits for farmers who allow Land Life to restore their degraded properties.
“Simple things like trees provide shade for stock, they provide shelter from wind and rain,” Mr Ferraro said.
“You get a lot more interaction of birds, insects, et cetera coming into the native pasture and helping with pest control.”
...the challenge for most landholders is they can't pay to do that work, which is where we can come in."
Land Life rehabilitates and takes care of the site for 40 years before the land is fully returned to the responsibility of the farmer.
So, how is Land Life rejuvenating the land?
The Process
Before restoration even begins, the sites chosen are carefully selected to ensure positive environmental outcomes.
Landscape connectivity is a key factor in the selection process, said Mr Ferraro.
“We are particularly looking for landscape connectivity so that we can help create wildlife corridors,” he said.
“Let's say there was ... an 100-hectare block in the middle of 100,000 hectares of cropping land and there was not much else around it, we wouldn't be interested in that sort of project because you're just creating an island that wouldn't really be able to function properly long term.”
Once a site has been selected, the process of acquisition or gaining farmer permission begins alongside community and First Nations engagement.
Land Life then uses technology such as remote sensing to design the site and figure out where trees should be planted.
Seeds are then sourced and planted according to a plant per hectare plan that is created to restore the natural ecosystem cycles.
After planting, the site continues to be monitored for biomass growth every 3 years until the 40 years is over.
The progression of this restoration can be seen in Land Life’s work in Victoria.
Image taken by Indiana Hardwick
Image taken by Indiana Hardwick
Gold mining and agriculture has left significant areas of degraded and unused land across Central Victoria that are isolating pockets of habitat.
Since 2019, Land Life has been working to restore these areas and create key wildlife corridors between nature reserves.
Five years in, the project has restored plant life in over 480 hectares combining Moorl Moorl, Lawan, Ampitheatre, Stuart Mill and Wychitella.
For Land Life this is just the beginning.
“We've got about 19 projects so far in Australia ... we've done about 2800 hectares in total and what we're going to be looking to do is to rapidly scale that up," Mr Ferraro said.
"We want to be doing about 3000 hectares next year and then doubling that year on year. So, it's a pretty quick growth for us in Australia.”
However, while Land Life is making great progress, there are some things working against them.
Current Issues with the solution
Restoration of degraded and unused land does not come without its issues.
The most pressing of which are funding and resources.
Currently, national and international organisations can invest in Land Life projects to achieve corporate social responsibility and net zero goals.
Land Life primarily relies on the Australian Carbon Credit Unit (ACCU) Scheme said Mr Ferraro.
“Whilst we talk about ourselves as a nature restoration company and that's what we do, the way that that's funded is through carbon credits because there's only a very, very small market for biodiversity credits,” he said.
“Certainly, we would be saying, look, companies should be reducing their emissions and decarbonising first but some of them can't do that at this point.”
The projects will require ongoing funding for Land Life to successfully scale up restoration.
Ironically, according to Mr Ferraro, climate change is the main challenge facing Land Life.
“What's happening is that we're finding with rising temperatures and seasonal changes is our planting window is much smaller,” he said. he said.
“We've also got a lot more climate variability ... we won't plant seedlings for instance, in really, really dry years ... because they all die.”
This intensifies the need for restoration projects, but it is time consuming to plant thousands of trees.
One promising solution to this issue is Land Life’s development of a robot.
Currently in the prototype stage, the Tree Seeding Robot is designed to make reforestation more efficient and scalable.
Seeding robots will not only reduce manual labour, but also allow access into areas unable to be entered by humans, said Mr Ferraro.
“The idea would be that we'd have a fleet of these things,” he said.
“So, that's the sort of ultimate goal for what we want to get to ... it's a great piece of technology that will allow us to do what we need to do far more quickly.”
What now?
Land Life is focusing on raising money to grow their reforestation projects while continuing to rejuvenate degraded land and develop technology.
But there is still a lot of work to do, said Mr Ferraro.
“We've got some massive challenges with climate change ... we've got this 1.5° target which we're not going to meet and we're going to exceed ... that's just the reality,” he said.
“There's a clear requirement as part of whatever happens that we're going to have to decarbonise as rapidly as we can, but we're also going to have to do as much offsetting as we can whilst the decarbonisation starts.
“We are scaling up ... and we do have ambitions to be the largest provider in Australia."
