• The results further validated previous understanding that water quality change is not completely predictable or linear , and that it is influenced by numerous factors and can fluctuate between years . Communicating benefits and improvements in water quality to landholders can be linked to fluctuations and improvements with soil health , plant diversity , infiltration , biodiversity , profitability , and drought resilience . Using language and terms that are familiar to landholders supports communication and may assist future adoption .
• Landholders with properties greater than 30,000ha were less positive about opportunities that the LDC Project offered for enabling the adoption of land management practice improvements ( Jarvis et al ., 2020 ).
• Grazing landholders who were engaged with the LDC Project predominantly had positive attitudes to maintaining minimum ground cover and were motivated to look after the land as it “ reduces erosion ” and “ leaves more grass ” yet had mixed confidence in their ability to implement change . Multiple barriers continued to arise including weather , time , labour , costs , and weeds . When a number of these barriers were taken into consideration and removed , such as an initial offer of access to machinery and operators for a ‘ Grader Project ’, it resulted in the greatest adoption of a single practice change . For this to be achieved , landholders were offered a property improvement with minimal time and cost impediments , as an ‘ opt out ’ rather than ‘ opt in ’ approach . Whilst the water quality outcomes were modelled as marginal from this approach , the principles of reducing barriers to involvement , including reducing the paperwork and LDC Project field officers coordinating the contractors and covering the financial costs , resulted in a rapid uptake of change .
• Across all practice change types , there was a consistent level of contract extensions and noncompletions both pre- and during the LDC Project that now presents an opportunity to offer additional support and produce greater water quality outcomes .
• From landholders surveyed in the BBB the most widely used method to manage stocking rate was to adjust rates based on forage budgets and groundcover , followed by matching stocking rates to carrying capacity , together accounting for almost 80 % of respondents . This was further supported by approximately 90 % of landholders having positive views of these management practices , showing opportunities exist to increase these practices further ( Jarvis et al ., 2020 ). When landholders were asked specifically how they would like to manage streambanks over the next 5 years , the proportion of landholders wanting to move to best practice doubled ( through offstream watering points , fencing streambanks and occasional wet season spelling , increasing from around 25 % to almost 60 % of BBB landholders from the start to the end of the project ).
• Landholders expressed that finance was the greatest barrier to implementing this practice change , environmental benefits the greatest motivator , and government funding the greatest consideration in implementing this change . Interestingly , there was a correlation between landholders most motivated to make streambank change and the occurrence of LDC Project field officer visits as well as taking part in gully projects on properties .
• Landholders within the BBB expressed motivation to further progress stocking rate management practices into best practices , with approximately 10 % forecasting they would make this change within the next 5 years . The main barriers landholders expressed with making these changes were weather and seasonal issues , lack of time and high costs ( relevant to their property management ). The motivations of landholders to make further changes related to this practice improvement included production , profitability , and the environment ( Jarvis et al ., 2020 ).
99