Healthy Land and Water believes that supporting communities to develop an emotional connection with their local waterways is crucial in protecting the health of South East Queensland’s waterways.”

Developing ways to foster and nurture this community connection is the focus of the Living Waterways framework and is enabled through our Water by Design program. In this it differs somewhat from the array of other community bush regeneration projects that are in place today along the Enoggera Creek catchment to stabilise and restore Creekside habitats.

While our projects involve habitat rehabilitation components, their key outcomes are as much located out in the communities that surround the project as they are in the waterway and natural ecosystems themselves.

Water Sensitive Community Action recognises that restoration is not just about re-creating natural habitats – It is also about restoring natural water flows into these systems. Without this the rehabilitated habitats remain under relentless pressure from the very disturbed water cycles that contribute to the problems in the first instance.

While the essential processes by which to revegetate degraded creekside environments are well understood today, the means to restore natural water inputs to the system by working with the local community in order to help control stormwater and pollutants so as to mimic more natural water cycles in the system is to a degree uncharted territory.

Community play a significant role in protecting, restoring and building resilience and care of our unique and beautiful land, waterways and biodiversity. As such they must necessarily be involved in the process of management, design, and future maintenance and protection of their local waterways.

Community provide the local power, knowledge and expertise on how their special places are valuable, how they function and what is needed to manage and protect them for the future. They will ultimately become the stewards of these areas into the future.