Barbara Morrell

Barbara is a highly motivated landcare farmer with her husband at Pingrup who began looking at landcare issues in 1985, when they attempted to stop water flow from their heavy clay property onto a family member’s highly saline property over the road. The couple collected seed from their remnant bush and direct seeded large swathes back to native vegetation.

Undertaking the work on their property led Barbara to start the Range Road Catchment Group who planted and fenced over 300,000 trees and thousands of saltbush.  In the mid to late 1990’s as a local shire councillor Barbara led development of extensive research and landcare effort into the Lake Chinocup catchment. She was instrumental in unifying the community from a divisive mining proposal in an A class reserve.

Barb chaired the Shire of Kent Land Conservation District Committee for many years, with a key part of her legacy being the Shire setting a rate levy to fund a shire landcare officer as state government funds were withdrawn.  Barb went onto Chair the Avon Working Group and the Avon Catchment Council and was joint chair at the Swan Avon Integrated Working Group as well as overseeing the development of the first NRM Strategy for the Wheatbelt region.

She was a member of the Australian Landcare Council, the Natural Heritage Trust’s Joint Steering Committee, the State Salinity Council, the National Landcare Council and the State NRM Council. Barb worked for a number of years in the State NRM office, where she added a strong community perspective to how grants were managed and audited.  Barbara was awarded a Centenary Medal in 2001 for her service to local government and community.