The
WaterSmart Pastoral Production™ project combines the best of
what is known about grazing management with the best technologies
in stock water storage and delivery on pastoral properties. It aims
to assist landholders on various types of pastoral country by:
- Building integrated and tailored knowledge-sharing networks
between equipment suppliers, equipment developers and pastoralist
consumers for the delivery systems suitable for rangelands
situations;
- Consolidating and delivering knowledge of technologies and
appropriate equipment for retrieving, storing, and delivering water
efficiently, reliably and cost effectively across pastoral
properties;
- Consolidating and delivering knowledge of rangeland water
regimes to demonstrate how landholders can utilise water in the
landscape as: a stock management tool; a land condition driver; a
key element in property planning; a variable in grazing tactics; an
influence on Total Grazing Pressure; and an influence on the
regional health of biodiversity;
- Encouraging pastoralists to keep records of rainfall events and
the responses of their country to those events (through a
‘water-year diary’) so they become better able to
predict responses to future rainfall events;
- Demonstrating the (substantial) benefits of up-grading to an
improved property-wide water management system including modern
water retrieval, storage and delivery systems that will result in
time and dollar savings to enterprises;
- Deriving common lessons from trials sufficient to expand
current understandings and create a nationally-useful reference
resource for pastoralists.
This is a Desert
Knowledge Cooperative Research Centre (DK CRC) Project, funded by
the
National Landcare Program (NLP), administered by the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and
Forestry (DAFF).
Project partners
are: Desert Channels Queensland
Inc. (DCQ), the South
Australian Arid Lands Natural Resource Management Board (SAAL
NRM), the Northern Territory
Department of Primary Industries, Fisheries and Mines (NT
DPIFM) and pastoral partners, manufacturers and suppliers.
