Ovens Murray Drought Resilience Plan

The Drought-Ready Landholders Initiative will equip both resident and absentee landholders in the Mansfield region with essential knowledge and skills to manage properties and livestock during drought conditions.

Up2Us Landcare Alliance will deliver two workshops for large landholders (one funded through Future drought Fund) and three workshops for small landholders through a mix of face-to-face sessions and webinars.

This format ensures we reach the 50% of landholders who are absentee owners, addressing the growing concern of inadequate livestock and property management during drought periods.

Topics will include practical feeding strategies during dry conditions, animal health management, and on-farm water management, all of which will reduce livestock losses and improve animal welfare outcomes across the region.

Psychological preparedness is the missing link in building resilience to natural disasters such as drought.

While physical infrastructure and resource management are essential, well recognised and strategies are in place, equipping communities with the mental and emotional tools to navigate stress, uncertainty, and hardship is critical for long-term wellbeing and adaptive behaviours, but far less established.

Our vision is to create a drought specific mental health toolbox to offer to people at the start of a predicted drought period, in a similar way to the ‘have you checked your fire plan?’ campaigns.

This project will deliver a leadership development program designed to strengthen drought preparedness and climate resilience in regional communities across North East Victoria.

The program is built on the foundations of adaptive leadership and systems thinking, equipping participants with the ability to navigate complex challenges, make strategic decisions in uncertainty, and collaborate effectively across sectors.

This multi-day leadership experience will include a combination of retreats, structured program days, and a regional study tour, providing participants with an immersive learning experience that blends leadership theory with practical, place-based learning.

The program will focus on building leadership skills for resilience, deepening understanding of drought as a systems-level challenge, and strengthening regional networks for collective action.

Loss of paddock trees is a key impact of drought and has significant flow-on impacts for on-farm biodiversity, shade and shelter.

This project will quantify the threats to paddock trees and their sensitivity to drought by assessing changes in the extent and health of tree cover in north east Victoria, at a farm-scale and at a regional landscape-scale (the methods of which are outlined below).

The project will then identify strategies to increase the drought resilience of paddock trees, including increasing their resilience to other threats such as compaction and high nutrient loads at the base, insect attack, changing species distribution with climate change, increased mistletoe, storm damage, and limited recruitment potential.