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River Recovery
Our partnership with Greening Australia and other grass-roots community groups in managing the land around the new Pinjarra complex, complements Alcoa’s involvement in the River Recovery program.
Alcoa as a founding national alliance partner for the River Recovery program is also chair of the Business and Science Leaders River Recovery Roundtable.
The River Recovery program aims to help all Australians be involved in curing one of our most critical environmental issues – the health of Australia’s rivers.
The challenge for River Recovery is to reverse the degradation of Australia’s rivers. Nine rivers across Australia have been identified as needing most urgent attention:
- The Yarra (Victoria),
- The Derwent (Tasmania),
- The Boorowa (New South Wales),
- The Lower Murray (South Australia),
- The Burdekin (Queensland),
- The Hutt (Western Australia),
- The Coliban-Campaspe (Victoria), and
- The Katherine (Northern Territory).
In July 2007 the River Recovery program was launched for the Hutt River in the Kimberley region of Western Australia. Already the project has engaged 16 local landholders to undertake on-ground work; 125kms of fencing has been erected with 1000 hectares of vegetation now protected. At least 7,000 seedlings are to be established in the catchment.
Closer to our operations in Western Australia, the Peel River Recovery program is complementing the exceptional work already underway to manage the Murray River basin. Greening Australia is working on key tributaries of the Murray, such as the South Dandalup River and Oakley Brook.
In January 2007 a bushfire tore through the Oakley Brook region and threatened the Pinjarra townsite, Pinjarra alumina refinery and Huntly mine. Significant work throughout the year focused on helping the catchment recover from the fire.
In 2007 work to revegetate 16.5 hectares of land known as Nell’s Block included weed control, fencing and planting of 1000 seedlings. More than 2000 seedlings were planted in the South Dandalup River
Although significant, the effort throughout 2007 is only the start. Nearly 22,000 kilometres of Australia’s rivers are in urgent need of repair.
The health of Australia’s rivers is a vital component in maintaining biodiversity.
In 2007 our 12 year partnership with the Western Australian Museum to conserve the State’s frog populations – FrogWatch, was recognised as best practice at the National Australia Business Arts Foundation Awards.
Our partnership focuses on critical frog research and community outreach. To date the program has resulted in the discovery of four new frog species in the Kimberley region of Western Australia.
An important element of FrogWatch is the opportunity for everyday Australians to take part in helping conserve frog numbers.
In 2007 more than 230,000 people were positively engaged in Alcoa Frog Watch with 323 community members involved in hands-on frog conservation through the frog friendly garden workshops and frog nightwalks.
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