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Cottoning onto cool critters at wildlife spotlight evening

Families in the Border Rivers region recently enjoyed a family wildlife discovery and spotlight evening at ‘Taraba’ near Toobeah, hosted by Cotton Rivercare Champion, Mark Palfreyman.

Cotton RiverCare program manager and CottonInfo technical specialist for natural resources, Stacey Vogel, said some 30 local people attended the event - held on Friday, 21 October. 

“The evening gave attendees an opportunity to get up close to animals they normally wouldn’t see – like microbats, the pale-headed snake and the Macquarie turtle,” Stacey said.  

Cotton RiverCare blog - the case of the curious echidna

Cotton RiverCare is a program that promotes and supports responsible management of riverine areas within cotton growing regions of Australia.

The program follows the journey of cotton grower and national Cotton RiverCare champion, Mark Palfreyman. Mark and his wife Anne and their four children Edward, Finn, Wilson & Elsie blog about discovering what biodiversity lives on their farm, how their management decisions impact on the condition of their riverine areas and the benefits healthy riverine areas can provide their farming business.

Cotton RiverCare blog - Templeton the water rat

Cotton RiverCare is a program that promotes and supports responsible management of riverine areas within cotton growing regions of Australia. In this blog post, cotton grower Mark Palfreyman talks water rats! 

We are all very excited as we recently had the pleasure of seeing a 'rakali' or water rat (Hydromys chrysogaster) on our farm. We have been trying to get this photo for a few days but he is well camouflaged against the debris in the river and is a very fast swimmer! Cute little guy, my wife and the kids named him Templeton.

Zoologist turned cotton grower embarks on journey to track river health

A zoology degree is not a traditional qualification for a cotton grower, but for Southern QLD grower Mark Palfreyman it provides an ideal grounding for his new role as national Cotton RiverCare champion.

The role forms part of the newly launched Cotton RiverCare program, which aims to support the responsible management of riverine areas within Australia’s cotton growing regions.

Kayak trips reinforce important message about river health

More than 100 people took part in four kayak trips in North West NSW in November to learn about riverine health and how to keep local rivers and riparian areas healthy.

The trips were hosted by CottonInfo on rivers at Moree, Mungindi and Boggabilla, to help raise awareness of the importance of native vegetation and its management.

CottonInfo’s natural resource technical specialist, Stacey Vogel, coordinated the events, which also featured two ecologists.

Climate Risk Management: Making decisions and dealing with imperfect information

by CottonInfo climate, energy and carbon technical specialist Jon Welsh.

Evaluating and interpreting layers of climate information, weather acronyms and colour charts at key decision making times can be a daunting prospect. Some growers have their favourite weather sites on which they base their decisions, while others prefer to watch for a flock of black cockatoos on the wing or a cactus flowering to see if rain is coming. Others only believe forecast rain when the gutters are running water. Those that have been burnt by a forecast in the planning stage have an inherent distrust in weather predictive systems.

Solar the hot topic at cotton Big Day Outs

Alternative and renewable energy sources, including solar for powering cotton production, were hot topics at this week’s (24 and 25 February) CottonInfo Big Days Out at St George, QLD and Gunnedah, NSW.

The days attracted 60 and 80 participants respectively and visitors were keen to hear from experienced growers, energy researchers, auditors, consultants and system providers.

Ian and Anne Brimblecombe hosted the first day at their St George farm, “Burgorah”, while day two was on Scott Morgan’s property “Kensal Green”, Gunnedah.

Rising costs, climate change prompt shift to solar

An energy expenditure that had been climbing by around 10 per cent per year coupled with concerns about climate change have prompted St George cotton irrigators Ian and Anne Brimblecombe, “Burgorah”, to install solar panels which generate 100kW of electricity.

Their 400 250-watt solar panels will soon be joined by a supplementary bank of panels which will enable a 70kW fixed-speed pump to be powered by solar alone on sunny days.

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