Transcript for Local landholders looking after the Agnes River, Toora North video

Katie James:

When we first arrived, this was all a tangle of Willow, there was just a tangle of wood along all of the riparian areas of the property so we decided to get rid of it.

Next thing, we knew an excavator that look like a brontosaurus is travelling down our driveway through the forest and over the course of four days.

They ripped out every willow tree and we had all of a sudden these cleared gullies and somehow the expert excavator had plucked his way around tree, ferns and black woods, and all of the natives that he could. To pile up this Willow into 22 piles, each about the size of a small house. So that's how much Willow was a long, a 300 meter Creek.

Matt Bowler:

Ben and Katie are one landholder in, you know, there might be hundreds of landholders along the Agnes and it's tributaries.

We are able to help those landholders to do their individual work, but we have a vision of connecting all that up. So all the way down to Corner Inlet, which is an asset that we have down the bottom, which everyone in the community spends time on a benefits from.

So for us the Riparian Action Plan is some funding that we can use to continue the great work that we've done here on the Agnes over the last couple of decades. And what we really want to do is protect these waterways and keep them the way they are.

Katie James:

So after excavating the Willow and burning those piles, we had a blank slate. And but our passion was ignited for biodiversity.

For the sake of the future of the planet, we decided to do on a small scale. What we think our children and their generation will be responsible for on a massive global scale.

Child speaking:

We plant the trees and then the insects come then, the frogs come to eat the insects then the snakes come to eat the frogs and then the birds of prey comes to eat the snakes.

Katie James:

It's really important because this Creek flows into Agnes river which flows into Corner Inlet. And so we're directly affecting the health of corner Inlet by ensuring that our Creeks healthy. Once you've got a healthy vibrant waterway, the rest of the health kind of follows.