About Us
The Burnett Catchment Care Association Inc (formed in 1994) BCCA is a community run Not for Profit organisation, focused on Natural Resource Management in the Burnett and associated river systems.
Burnett
The Burnett River begins in the Dawes Ranges north east of Monto in south-east Queensland, Australia and runs some 400 kilometres to discharge into the sea at Burnett Heads near Bundaberg. The Burnett Catchment area includes the Burnett, Elliott, Gregory and Kolan Rivers and covers and area of land spreading 33, 150 square kilometres. The Catchment includes the towns of Monto, Mt Perry, Eidsvold, Mundubbera, Gayndah, Biggenden, Wondai, Murgon, Goomeri, Cherbourg, Kingaroy, Nanango, Gin Gin, Isis, Childers, Bundaberg and Bargara.
Catchment
The Burnett Catchment consists of a complex variety of landforms, geology and soil types. Agriculture is the principal land use of the Catchment with the most important industries being beef and dairy cattle, sugar cane, field crops, horticultural crops and intensive livestock. Some 2,877,243 ha or 74% of the total Catchment area is involved in actual agriculture; within the agriculture sector the predominant land use is grazing which accounts for over 80%.
Care
Integrated Catchment Management (ICM) is a philosophy that encourages a coordinated approach to the management of natural resources in Queensland. Its overall purpose is to integrate the management of land, water and related biological resources in order to achieve their sustainable and balanced use.
ICM involves the voluntary actions of stakeholders including government, rural landholders, industry, fisheries and urban dwellers that incorporate the goals of achieving and maintaining a healthy catchment for future generations.
Association
The Burnett Catchment Care Association (BCCA) was initiated in 1994 when a number of concerned citizens formed an Interim Steering Committee to facilitate the formation of a catchment care group. This steering committee was aware of the need to address natural resource management issues on a catchment approach instead of a town or property alone basis.
By October 1995 this interim steering committee had become the Burnett Catchment Care Association. Today the organisation continues to grow and respond to changes in Natural Resource Management and to stakeholder needs.
In 2007, the Burnett Catchment Care Association (BCCA) launched Better Burnett, funded by the Federal Government through the Burnett Mary Regional Group (BMRG). The pilot was completed in 2008, and BCCA have continued to work with BMRG with funding through the Federal Government’s Caring for our Country program.
For more information about funding programs with BCCA currently underway, check out Better Catchments, Sustainable Practices and Reef Rescue in the menu bar at the left of the screen.
Become a Member
More information is available regarding current projects, by any of the options below:
1. Become a member for $1 per year (contact us for a membership form)
2. Sign up to recieve website updates direct to your inbox from the box on our home page
3. Subscribe to our RSS Feed
What was the Better Burnett program?
A ‘Better Burnett’ is what Burnett Catchment Care Association hope to see and in 2007 the ‘Better Burnett Catchment Recovery Pilot’ was lauched as a 14 month program supporting land managers to undertake onground works that would improve landscape, lifestyles, and livelihoods. BCCA continue to work towards this goal with current and future projects.
Activities under the ‘Better Burnett’ pilot fell into three main areas; Better Beef - providing assistance to implement sustainable grazing land management, Better Bush – managing our best assets and greatest threats, and Better Water - taking care of our water ways for a healthy river system.
The Better Beef program focused activity on the Cardarga Creek, Baywulla Creek, and Auburn River sub-catchments in Phase 1, providing graziers with incentives to better use of grass and water for productivity and catchment health.
Better Bush put support into sustainable forestry, demonstrations for better weed management, and taking care of endangered, vulnerable and rare species.
Better Water assisted land managers in taking care of the water ways and reducing aquatic weeds.