Rock work and grasses are replacing erosion on a cattle property near Innisfail as part of a $2.3 million project to improve the land and better protect the Great Barrier Reef.

More than 200 tonnes of rock has transformed two sites on the Loudon family’s East Palmerston farm, where changes to cattle and pasture practices are also making a difference.

Stuart Loudon said the property, on Berner and Fishers Creek, had been farmed by the family since the 1960s. “It’s hilly land and when it’s wet, it’s really wet,’’ he said. “We’ve been working on improving the soil, our pastures and the land so it can better handle our cattle and the wet seasons.”

The third-generation grazier has welcomed recent earth and rock work by Terrain NRM at a creek crossing and on an eroded hillside.

“The crossing area had eroded over time because of a natural spring bubbling up out of the ground above the creek in the wet season and the ongoing cattle and farm vehicle traffic,” Terrain’s Vanessa Drysdale said. “It’s the only way to access another section of the farm so we’ve laid a rock bed that’ll get cattle and traffic over soft ground without causing more erosion.”

Ms Drysdale said a gully head was forming beside a sloping pasture on another section of land where cattle once moved between paddocks. “Water was running down the cattle pads in the wet season and being funnelled into the rainforest at a gateway, causing more and more gully erosion,’’ she said. “We’ve created a bowl-shaped area and a bund so that the water spreads out over a much wider area on its way to natural waterways and doesn’t make its way to the gully head anymore.”

Mr Loudon is following up with more fencing, to keep cattle off creek banks and create another paddock for rotational grazing. He said a shift to more natural pasture enhancers was also helping to improve the land.

“We don’t use a lot of fertiliser here anymore – we’re applying a fair bit of fish emulsion and worm juice,’’ he said. “We’ve been doing that for about four years and we’re seeing healthier soil and thicker grass.”

Zuni bowls have begun their work to stop erosion on Tablelands farms.

Bowls that were constructed 10 months ago have settled into the landscape and grazier Owen Rankine says grass is growing on land below that was previously bare.

“We haven’t had a big wet season but the amount of flow through the bowls has been enough to see how they work and to get them established, with silt between the rocks and grass on the land below them,’’ he said.

“Next year you’ll barely see they are there and the water should flow through nicely.”

Zuni bowls are a small-scale cost-effective way for landholders to stop erosion advancing. They are a lining of rocks built in gully heads where there are abrupt vertical drops, and they are designed to stop water from disturbing the soil any further. The bowls work with the natural landscape by mimicking the kind of forms found in creeks.

Five Zuni bowls were built in two gullies on the Rankine’s property as a demonstration site for the Wet Tropics. Terrain NRM brought Tablelands business RegenAG’s North American watershed specialist Craig Sponholtz to the region for the project. He designed the bowls, trained local earthmovers and led workshops with farmers on cost-effective ways to solve gully erosion problems.

The work is part of Terrain NRM’s Upper Johnstone Integrated Project, funded through the Queensland Government’s Natural Resources Investment Program and focused on erosion hotspots in the Tablelands-Innisfail region.

Terrain NRM’s Jen Mackenzie said the Johnstone River catchment was a priority for water quality improvement, with the Far North’s highest sediment reduction target as part of the Australian and Queensland Government’s Reef 2050 Water Quality Improvement Plan.

Teams of tree-planters are helping to fight hillslope erosion on Tablelands properties in a boon for farmers, the Johnstone River and Great Barrier Reef.

Millaa Millaa graziers Elizabeth, Bruce and Gordon Carcary are among the numbers opening their gates to revegetation crews as part of a $2.3 million project focused on erosion hotspots in the Tablelands-Innisfail region.

Five thousand native trees were planted at the Carcary’s grazing property this week in a landslide area, and 2000 trees, shrubs and grasses went into the ground along an eroded creek system on a Malanda property.

Mrs Carcary welcomed the helping hands of Terrain NRM staff and its service provider NQ Land Management Services.

“This was a timely opportunity for us – we have an 80m long, 50m wide landslip that happened after two to three days of heavy rains a couple of years ago,’’ she said. “It’s on steep land that we fenced but it has been needing stabilisation to the stop more land falling in and topsoil washing away.”

Terrain NRM’s Jen Mackenzie said historical clearing of steep rainforest country for grazing had created landscapes susceptible to erosion. The two tree-planting projects will, each year, prevent an estimated 200 tonnes of sediment from flowing into the Johnstone River catchment and out to the Great Barrier Reef.

“Trees are a very cost-effective way of stabilising soil and the most economical way to deal with these two sites based on their physical characteristics,’’ Mrs Mackenzie said.

“We look at erosion on a site-by-site basis. On one property we installed rock structures known as Zuni bowls to solve gully erosion, and we’ve put in creek crossings on another property to stop erosion caused by cattle and vehicles. We’ll be working with these graziers over three years.”

A remote cattle property in Far North Queensland is doing its bit to help the Great Barrier Reef.

Glen Ruth Station’s Archer family will prevent several hundred tonnes of sediment – or up to 10 semi-trailer loads – from reaching the Reef each year through major earthworks to stop eroded gully systems in their tracks.

Grazier Curtis Archer said cyclones and floods had taken their toll on sections of his family’s 82,000-hectare Glen Ruth cattle station in the Mt Garnet region over the last 20 years, causing gullies to spread and deepen.

“One gully system was two metres deep in places and more than half a kilometre long,’’ he said.  “We’re getting big valleys where the grass doesn’t grow, coming off Cameron Creek which feeds into the Herbert River.”

The Archers have been working with Terrain NRM as part of a $3 million Herbert Gully and Grazing Project, funded through the Australian Government’s Reef Trust IV program to help landholders tackle erosion and fine-tune grazing management practices.

Terrain NRM’s Jen Mackenzie said roads built across the station in the 1960s for surveying a Herbert River Dam proposal were contributing to the erosion issues.

Erosion repair work at Glen Ruth has included a 100m bund wall, backfilling of road drains and the construction of a basin with gentle banks where native grasses will be planted. It also includes whoa boys, or dirt mounds built across roads, to direct wet season storm water away from the sites.

“The aim is to control the gully heads and redirect wet season water flow,’’ Ms Mackenzie said.  “This project also includes revegetation and changes to grazing management practices.”

The Archer family is trialling denser stocking rates in smaller paddocks for shorter periods in an area close to the homestead.

“We are doing this with 260 head of cattle in five 20ha paddocks,’’ Curtis said. “On this small scale, we’ve already seen improvements in our pastures. The grass roots grow deeper and the grass gets a lot stronger.”

The family has also fenced off a section of the Herbert River: “We did the exclusion fencing about 10 years ago. We’re always trying to improve our land and we’re more than happy when it also helps to protect the Reef.”

Farmers are hitting the creeks to learn more about waterway health in their patch.

Landholders of all ages waded into the issue recently, taking samples from Tablelands creeks to check everything from pH levels to the types of tiny creatures living in the water.

Terrain NRM’s Evizel Seymour said macroinvertebrates such as dragonfly, mayfly larvae and freshwater shrimps were great indicators of waterway health.

“Water bugs respond quickly to water quality changes and some species are more sensitive than others so they can give us a good idea of waterway health, along with things like pH levels, temperature and turbidity levels,’’ she said.

“We compared a section of Peterson Creek and Malanda Creek. We found that the turbidity at Peterson Creek was higher than Malanda Creek, with an abundance of macro-invertebrates. Malanda Creek had less numbers but more sensitive macro-invertebrates.”

Landholders were given buckets, pH kits, turbidity tubes, thermometers, invertebrate identification sheets for ongoing monitoring on their farms.

Malanda grazier Barry Thurling said he was impressed with the number of aquatic insects.

“The variety and number of critters in our samples, and the variations, were surprising,’’ he said.

“Water quality is generating a lot more interest as time goes on – it’s important to everybody.”

The water sampling field day is part of a $2.3 million Upper Johnstone Integrated Project, funded by the Queensland Government’s Natural Resources Investment Program and delivered by Terrain NRM. The focus is on erosion hotspots in the Tablelands-Innisfail region, helping landholders to repair erosion and improve pastures, and reducing sediments loads entering the Great Barrier Reef.

The Johnstone River catchment is a priority for water quality improvement – it has the Far North’s highest sediment reduction target in the Australian and Queensland Government’s Reef 2050 Water Quality Improvement Plan.

New cattle creek crossings built on a Tablelands farm are the latest stage in a major project to tackle erosion, improve productivity for graziers and better protect the Great Barrier Reef.

Beef cattle breeder Rob Pagano has been working with Terrain NRM on his Tarzali property where stream banks and springs dissect the land and cause erosion problems in the wet season. Three crossings have been installed using a series of standard industrial-strength poly pipes.

“We have springs all the way along stream banks so it gets pretty muddy and disturbed when the cattle are going through, as well as the tractor,’’ Mr Pagano said.  “They feed into Ithaca Creek and then the North Johnstone River.

“We’d created smaller crossings with pipes before, put troughs in all the paddocks and fenced so this work has built on what was already happening.”

The new crossings are part of the $2.3 million Upper Johnstone Integrated Project, funded by the Queensland Government’s Natural Resources Investment Program and delivered by Terrain NRM. The focus is on erosion hotspots in the Tablelands-Innisfail region.

Terrain NRM’s Jen Mackenzie said landholders were building on the help they were being given.

“We are providing assistance with the earthworks and increasingly we’re seeing that this reinvigorates people’s enthusiasm for changes to grazing management practices,’’ she said. “These changes include re-grassing, fencing areas off and installing additional water points.”

Other Upper Johnstone Integrated Project works have included rock features known as Zuni bowls to stop gully erosion and a series of workshops for Far Northern landholders on ways to improve grazing practices, pasture management and soil health.

Mr Pagano said his next steps were planting grasses along the stream banks and doing more fencing.

“The cattle are locked off the new crossings and they will be until after the wet season,’’ he said. “I want to plant grasses and let them grow with no pressure on them. This has been great for me. You want to do what’s best for the land and the cows but you can’t always afford to take those steps all at once.”

Mr Pagano bought his 72-hectare property in 2002 when it was made up of three large paddocks. He has fenced to create 28 paddocks and planted trees.

“Cattle cross waterways where they want to cross them, so all my crossings are now where the cattle want to go,” he said.

“With the extra fencing we can keep the cattle away from erosion spots and manage our pastures better when it gets wet by moving stock through paddocks more quickly so there is less damage to the soil,” he said.

Ms Mackenzie said the Johnstone River catchment was a priority for water quality improvement and had been given the Far North’s highest sediment reduction target in the Australian and Queensland Government’s Reef 2050 Water Quality Improvement Plan.

“This project is all about reducing sediment losses to the Great Barrier Reef lagoon while helping graziers to help themselves by addressing erosion problems and improving their pastures and livelihoods,’’ she said.