A PROJECT which transports thousands of city slickers from Melbourne to the country to plant trees has taken out a major prize at the National Landcare Awards.

The Hindmarsh Landcare Network has created wildlife corridors by planting nearly two million trees, which stretch across the Wimmera region in western Victoria.

Three thousand Melburnians spend a weekend a year helping the project, getting a taste of country life by planting trees and building fences.

Volunteers plant threatened species like the jumping jack wattle, while they try to control fox and weed populations.

The Hindmarsh Network won the nature conservation award at the Landcare awards, held in Parliament House in Canberra last night.

Landcare is a movement of community-based volunteer groups which aims to protect the environment.

Project winners included everything from a small Victorian school creating bush tucker gardens and working with local communities to protect the environment to a Tasmanian based project that has brought together 30 Coastcare groups and more than 1,000 people to protect the coastline.  

Other winners included a Tasmanian based river care project, a WA project that has raised over $1 million for onground Landcare work and battled locust plagues, a WA couple using pioneering Landcare techniques, a visionary Queensland farmer who encourages other people to be involved with Landcare and a New South Wales based catchment management authority that has inspired the community to protect natural resources. 

A Victorian council offering unique support systems for farmers and the community also won a national award and an NT project protecting the precious Tiwi Islands whilst generating jobs.

A Victorian based project that has created uninterrupted wildlife corridors involving 2 million trees also took out top honours.

    At a glance – the winners of the 2008 National Landcare Awards: 
  • NLP Individual Landcarer Award – Jeff Campbell from Mitchell in Queensland
  • Murray-Darling Basin Commission Rivercare Award – The Mount Roland Rivercare Catchment Inc from Mount Roland in Tasmania
  • CarbonSMART Nature Conservation Award – Hindmarsh Landcare Network, based in Nhill, Victoria.
  • Alcoa Landcare Community Group Award – Oyster Harbour Catchment Group Inc based in Mount Barker, Western Australia.
  • Leighton Holdings Local Government Landcare Partnerships Award – Hume City Council, based in Dallas near Broadmeadows in Melbourne, Victoria.
  • Australian Government Landcare NRM Region Award – Lachlan Catchment Management Authority based in Forbes, NSW.
  • Rural Press Landcare Primary Producer Award – Robert and Caroline Rex, based in Wagin in WA.
  • Westpac Landcare Education Award – Camperdown P-12 College Environment Group based in Camperdown, Victoria.
  • Rio Tinto Alcan Landcare Indigenous Award – Tiwi Land Council based in the Northern Territory.
  • Australian Government Coastcare Award – The Southern Coastcare Association of Tasmania, based in Hobart, Tasmania.
  • The People’s Choice Award (voted by the public through landcareheroes.com) was awarded to the Wyong Creek Public School based in the Yarramalong Valley near Gosford, NSW.

with AAP