In the aftermath of the devastating 2016 floods, Tasmania’s three natural resource management organisation’s (NRM North, NRM South and Cradle Coast NRM) implemented Nature-based Solutions (NbS) across their regions to rehabilitate agricultural land and support ongoing flood resilience.
Funded by the State Government, $4 million was made available through the Agriculture Landscape Rehabilitation Scheme (ALRS). The scheme was open to flood-affected landowners and communities across 20 local government areas. A total of 159 eligible nominated projects were funded through ALRS.
The key focus of this project, Tasmanian NRMs: Scaling NbS for Flood Resilience and Recovery project is to evaluate the effectiveness of the implemented NbS for targeted flood recovery and ongoing flood resilience on primary production land using a national indicator framework.
A comprehensive landholder survey was conducted including online and phone conversations to understand what worked, what didn’t, why didn’t things work, how can we improve for the next flood. This was followed up with onsite inspections of a range of priority sites selected using a multi criteria analysis.
These learnings were then used implement NbS in three flood-affected sites, at which a baseline evaluation will be undertaken. Using the national indicator framework the project will also look at the social, economic and environmental co-benefits of NbS by creating business case studies using the latest economic and environmental modelling.
The project is now over halfway and will be finished in November 2026.