Greenfleet - Murray Darling Rescue

The Murray-Darling Basin is the catchment for the Murray and Darling Rivers and their many tributaries. It extends across one-seventh of the continent and has a population of nearly two million people. Another million people outside the region depend heavily upon its resources.

The Murray-Darling Basin generates about 40 percent of the national income derived from agriculture and grazing. It supports one quarter of the nation's cattle herd, half of the sheep flock, half of the cropland and almost three-quarters of its irrigated land. The Basin contains more than twenty major rivers as well as important groundwater systems. It is also an important source of fresh water for domestic consumption, agricultural production and industry.

In 2001 Greenfleet and Scouts Australia joined forces to help revegetate the Murray Darling Basin and capture carbon in biodiverse native forests.

Over eight years 1,000,000 native trees were planted across 70 sites throughout SA, VIC, NSW and the ACT, with the help of several hundred dedicated Scouts and their families. The trees for each site were carefully selected to reflect the mixture of species present prior to land clearing.

The project reached its conclusion on 16 August 2008, when Scouts and Greenfleet planted their one millionth tree together, at a site near Eddington south west of Bendigo in central Victoria.

The resulting forests will help to combat climate change, improve rural land and water quality and provide shelter for native wildlife and livestock.