07-06-2004

The outstanding, practical and sustainable environmental efforts of Yass Valley grazier and Land & Water Australia Community Fellow John Ive and family have been recognised through one of Australia's top environmental awards.

At the United Nations Association of Australia World Environment Day Awards gala presentation ceremony in Melbourne on Friday night the Ive family won the CPA Australia Triple Bottom Line Award as well as receiving a Commendation in the Award for Outstanding Service to the Environment.

According to John this was the first time in the history of the awards that a farming family were not only finalists in any of the categories, but also named winners. The Ives were also the first winners of the UN Awards to receive multiple awards on the one night.

"The whole evening was just surreal, a blur," he said. "After receiving the first award the rest of the evening was not my own. The achievement was still sinking in when the announcement was made of the Commendation for the Award for Outstanding Service to the Environment.

"For the whole evening we were mobbed. I've been offered a number of speaking engagements, and the author of a book wants to do an interview.

"Even as we were leaving a representative from the Ricegrowers Association caught us on the stairs to arrange for us to go and speak to them."

For more than 20 years John and his family have been working to rehabilitate and restore to sustainable and productive use a 250 hectare grazing property in the Yass River Valley of southern New South Wales.

In 2002 the Ive family received a Land & Water Australia Community Fellowship to share their natural resource management success story.

When the Ives bought the property in 1980 it was suffering due to a history of poor land management and was generally rundown with areas of salinity, soil acidity, erosion, and poor pasture cover.

They named it 'Talaheni', an Arabic word which means 'wait awhile', and set about addressing the problems by instituting a range of environmental management solutions.

Today they have increased tree cover, filled and stabilised gullies, incorporated deep-rooted perennial pastures into the grazing regime and reorganised the property from nine square paddocks to 38 irregularly-shaped ones that reflect soil type, topography, aspect and productivity.

The amazing environmental transformation has also been achieved with improved livestock production.

"It's been a long but rewarding journey and still we continue to learn valuable lessons - including the need to constantly read the landscape and appreciate the landscape processes, to keep detailed records so as to chart progress but, above all, the need to be proactive while working in harmony with the environment" John said.

The United Nations Association of Australia awards recognise and acknowledge actions taken at a local level to address global issues. Other finalists in the Triple Bottom Line Award were the Albury-Wodonga Development Corporation and Hydro-Tasmania.

Last year the Ive family also received the NSW Landcare Research Award and they are now in the running for the National Landcare Research Award which will be announced at Parliament House in Canberra on September 1, 2004.

ENDS

For an interview with John Ive or more information about Land & Water Australia's Community Fellowships please  Media Officer, Land & Water Australia 02 6263 6000

For information about the United Nations Association of Australia World Environment Day Awards contact Patricia Collett on 03 9482 3655 or 0418 544315.