The Yass Area Network of Landcare Groups (YAN) was proud to be represented at this year’s National Landcare Conference, where Gill Hall and Sarah McGrath presented an engaging session on “Future-Proofing Landscapes: Climate Ready Revegetation in Action” as part of the Nature Repair & Climate Adaptation stream.
With over 650 participants attending the conference, the room was full for their session. It was great to see the enthusiasm for the topic. The presentation sparked plenty of interest and conversation, even catching the attention of conference MC Costa Georgiadis, who shared some of the session’s key messages with the main plenary audience, highlighting the impact and community-driven effort behind Climate Ready Revegetation.
Gill opened the session by taking attendees through the history and evolution of the Climate Ready Revegetation (CRR) program, explaining how it connects local action with climate science. The presentation outlined the key steps involved, from understanding our future climate analogues, to selecting species, using new online planning tools, and managing seed provenance sourcing and nursery distribution.
At its heart, Climate Ready Revegetation aims to introduce genetic diversity into revegetation projects, helping to ensure that the plants we put in the ground today will remain resilient across generations of changing conditions.
Sarah then shared YAN’s on-the-ground learnings from the program and offered insights for other Landcare groups looking to apply climate-ready principles to their own regions. She emphasised that making revegetation resilient means thinking long-term, about the future climate, species diversity, and the community effort needed to sustain it.
“Significant resources go into revegetation,” Sarah noted. “By combining science with community passion, we can boost genetic diversity and build true resilience into our landscapes.”
Guided by climate projections and supported by dedicated volunteers, the Yass Valley’s CRR program grows and plants thousands of climate-ready tubestock each year, embedding this innovative approach into core Landcare activities.
The high level of interest from across Australia was wonderful to see, and a reminder that community-led science and collaboration are at the heart of climate adaptation.
>> See the presentation here
>> Learn more about Climate Ready Revegetation
