The Fleurieu Coast Community Nursery has partnered with Fleurieu Environment Centre to run a Fire Wise project in the Yankalilla and Onkaparinga Local Government Areas.

They have gained funding of $250,000 to run the project, which is part of the Landscape Resilience program run by the Foundation for National Parks and Wildlife.

This is funded by the federal government’s Preparing Australian Communities Program, which has enabled the Fire Wise program to be run in 10 LGAs in South Australia, Victoria and New South Wales.

Kangaroo Island and the Adelaide Hills are the two other SA areas involved in the program, which aims to help communities mitigate bushfire risk through community-based natural resource management initiatives.

The Fire Wise Project will include a series of education events and workshops for the community run by Fleurieu Environment Centre.

They aim to investigate and increase awareness of fire retardant local native plant species and how they can be used to improve the resiliency of homes and landscapes in the event of bushfire. 

Events held as part of this project will include hands-on seed collecting, plant propagation, revegetation planting and educational seminars. 

The Fleurieu Coast Community Nursery will be involved in developing a seed bank to store local Fire Wise native species, as well as propagating plants for revegetation sites, demonstration gardens in public spaces and living seed banks on public and private land. 

Some of the key outcomes for the project include increasing availability of appropriate seed stock in the region and collaborating with other LGAs and First Nations groups to investigate the use of modern and traditional practices for improving the resiliency of landscapes to fire. 

The Bushfire Recovery project started in 2020 as a rapid response initiative after the 2019/20 Black Summer bushfires.

It builds on local knowledge held by communities on the ground in to investigate and document appropriate plant species selection and develop planting methodologies that reduce the impact of catastrophic bushfire events.

For more information about the local project contact Fleurieu Environment Centre via email.