2024 was a massive year for Central West Lachlan Landcare over the Parkes and Forbes Shires.

Over the next couple of weeks, I look forward to sharing a bit of a re-cap of 2024, highlighting our events and undertakings that have been a success in our communities.

At the start of 2024 we were pleased to hand over a financial contribution to Bogan Gate Memorial Hall towards the purchase of an Automated External Defibrillator (AED) with proceeds from our Landcare dinner held at Bogan Gate with Costa Georgiadis being contributed. A big thanks to Costa for donating all proceeds from the sale of his books on the evening to the cause.

In February the Landcare Enabling Program (LEP) officially kicked off across NSW, with seven groups involved in our Central West Region. Central West Lachlan Landcare are the reporting body for the Central West. When it commenced, this funding engaged nine coordinators.

We also kicked off the delivery of four workshops under the People Led Prevention (PLP) Project, empowering communities across regional NSW in developing disaster resilience and preparedness skills with presenters including celebrity gardener, Graham Ross, landscape designer, Sally Bourne and ecologist Alison Elvin and a special workshop with the Parkes SES and RFS.

After the Central West Lachlan Landcare Committee committed to supporting the Homegrown Parkes event until June 2027 as a first step to support the event over a longer term, we kicked off our March Autumn Homegrown Parkes event.

In May we welcomed Mycologist Alison Pouliot to Forbes for an amazing workshops on…..mycology, investigating the amazing world of fungi! It is surprising how many lovely samples we found on our walk in Forbes.

In June Stephanie Cameron was named as the recipient of the Gerald Carnie Award which is awarded to a person who has worked tirelessly for Landcare and keeping the Landcare dream alive.

We are always pleased to work with Forbes and Parkes Shire Council staff to deliver National Tree Day events which were held at the end of July with wonderful support from our communities. It is fabulous to look back at our advanced National Tree Day sites.

Of course, we still have the Landcare Learning and Literacy kits available to schools throughout the year. Follow the links on our website to find out more information on how these can be borrowed.

For further information on this article, please go to www.centralwestlachlanlandcare.org, twitter, facebook or Instagram @cwllandcare