The Ballarat Region Treegrowers is seeking your help to fund a new documentary film promoting the return of native vegetation in rural areas – a plant cover that is not only rich in biodiversity, but also has economic value for local people. Several philanthropic donors have already provided over half the proposed budget for the film, but more is needed to do the subject justice. BRT has created a crowdfunding initiative on IndieGoGo that can be found here. You can watch the trailer featuring prominent environmental educator Rob Gell, and choose from a wide array of perks, including a mention in the film credits and original artwork when making your donation.
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Original art of Mount Arapiles, available to a selected donor on BRT’s Indiegogo page
Feel free to spread the word about our project to friends and colleagues in your workplace, landcare/tree planting group, or conservation organisation through email, Facebook, Twitter and good old-fashioned word-of-mouth. Landholders in south-east Australia are increasingly collaborating to put diversity and complexity back into the region’s denuded landscapes. Landcare environmental plantings, agroforestry, biolinks and sustainable farm management plans are all contributing. By marrying Landcare’s conservation ethic with the imperatives of commercial production, we can tackle one big impediment – economic cost. This is where ‘analog forests’ have an advantage. They are based on the structure and content of an area’s original forest, but include economic resources (e.g. timber trees) within the new forest’s layers so landholders can gain income. The BRT has set up its own ‘biorich plantation‘ http://www.biorichplantations.com/ based on these principles of integrating conservation and production.
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Restoring the Country, a book by Stephen Murphy. Also available as a perk for IndieGoGo donors.
By blending conservation and production in more of our revegetation plans, we have greater incentive and ability to act as custodians – caring for our country to recreate some of the beauty and ecological function that existed in the well-managed valleys and woodlands of Aboriginal Australia. The documentary film will show the great work of community groups revegetating the Ballarat region, and advance the concept of analog forests as a way of helping achieve these goals. To see how you can help, please visit the Ballarat Treegrowers website, or their IndieGoGo fundraising page.

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