The Limestone Coast landscape is a rich tapestry of diverse primary production and biodiversity hot spots. Globally significant wetlands sit amongst globally significant food, wine and fibre production. Production and conservation sit side by side.
The landscape has been shaped by its unique geological history of limestone formations, and in more recent times, a drainage network enabling farming and food production. It is further being shaped by a warming and drying climate, challenging us to find new ways to bridge production and conservation so that the landscape continues to provide for humans and nature, and for future generations.
Water in the Limestone Coast has shaped the region’s environment and productivity, enabling human settlement and diverse industries to establish and change the landscape. The Limestone Coast Landscape Board delivers water policy in the form of water allocation plans and Water Affecting Activities. We advocate for wetlands in paddocks, looking after the current small non-permanent water bodies on private properties and returning farmland to wetland, as wetlands are integral to farm health and the environment in a drying climate.
The Limestone Coast region is largely in private ownership. We work with primary producers to support sustainable land management practices and enhance biodiversity on farms. We promote healthy soils, establishing shelterbelts and native vegetation, protecting wetlands and paddock trees, tackling pest animals and weeds so that land managers are resilient in a drying climate.
The Limestone Coast landscape comes from a long and complex geological history. Stranded dune ranges rise over interdunal plains, once hosting extensive swamps and wetlands, sinkholes and caves. At the time of European settlement, the Limestone Coast was a mosaic of vegetation types – forests, woodlands, mallee, shrubland, sedgeland, herblands, grasslands and extensive areas of wetlands. The construction of the first drains in the 1880s through to the 1970s has drained the land and changed the landscape to one of primary production. Our task is to help land managers to embrace conservation to conserve and enhance habitat for native plants and animals in the Limestone Coast to support biodiversity and threatened species.
Weeds and pest animals cost us all and we all have a role to play to minimise their harm. The Limestone Coast Landscape Board supports land managers to protect primary production and the environment from the impact of weeds and pest animals. Feral deer eradication is a cornerstone program, leading South Australia to a feral deer free state.
The Limestone Coast has over 5,000 children growing up in our landscape. We provide On Country learning programs for schools and communities to foster values and attitudes which support a life long commitment to caring for our landscape. We work to connect our youth and our community to Country.
The Limestone Coast Landscape Board acknowledges and respects the traditional owners of the ancestral lands and waters of the Limestone Coast. We acknowledge the elders past, present and future and we respect the deep feelings of attachment and relationships of Aboriginal Peoples to Country including the language groups: Meintangk, Potaruwutij, Bunganditj, Tatiara/Ngarkat, Tanganekald (Southern Clans) and Ngarrindjeri. The Limestone Coast Landscape Board walks with First Nations to manage our landscape. We walk together with the First Nations of the South East and the Ngarrindjeri peoples through organisations such as Burrandies Aboriginal Corporation, Ngarrindjeri Aboriginal Corporation, the Ngarrindjeri Lands & Progress Aboriginal Corporation and South East Aboriginal Focus Group. We walk together, guided by The South East Aboriginal Focus Group’s Lartara-Wirkeri Cultural Governance framework.
There are 8 local government areas in the Limestone Coast region:
Our community is at the heart of all that we do. We listen to people across the Limestone Coast to cultivate projects that bridge conservation and productivity for a healthy, productive and biodiverse landscape to benefit all.
Limestone Coast’s contributions to our national NRM snapshots
